Managerial Economics

Managerial Economics shows how microeconomic reasoning can help managers make better strategic and operational decisions. The course is organized around the central choices firms face: which products or services to offer, how much to produce, which customers to target, how to design a product line, which prices to charge, which inputs and suppliers to use, and how to respond to competitors.

Rather than treating microeconomics as an abstract theory of markets, the course uses it as a practical toolkit for decision-making. Students understand how demand, costs, customer heterogeneity, strategic interactions, and information issues influence profitable pricing, production, and product design. 

This course is one of the mandatory core courses in the Master in Management Science curriculum at Solvay Brussels School, ULB. The course objectives are: (i) to train students to be business practitioners with a strong background in standard economic models with a focus on pricing strategies; (ii) to learn theoretical concepts and apply these to real business situations; and (iii) to introduce the foundations of data-driven decision making for managers.

The course draws from microeconomic theory, industrial organization and quantitative analysis, with an applied focus throughout. The broad frameworks we study, combined with exercises and case studies, will help students analyze the markets they encounter throughout their careers as managers and develop pricing and production strategies across different competitive environments.

Required and Corequired knowledge and skills

This course requires a basic understanding of calculus (including optimization, partial derivatives, and functions of multiple variables) and introductory microeconomics (profit minimization, utility maximization, marginal concepts, and elasticities). Familiarity with basic statistics and regression analysis is also expected.

All students with a complementary program that is mandatory to access the Master of Management Sciences must pass the following courses in particular before being able to take the GEST-S-462 course in their annual program: ECON-S-202; ECON-S271; ECON-S-273; MATH-S-271.

This course consists of 12 weekly theory sessions and 6 practical exercise sessions. Both theory and practice sessions are an integral part of this course, and build on each other. All course content is in English.  

 

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

The online course materials (slides and published articles) on UV are designed to be self-contained, so purchasing the textbook is not required. 

Course notes

• Université virtuelle

Additional information

The professor reserves the right to invite any student to a complementary oral interview to verify personal mastery of the content of the submitted exam, particularly when inconsistencies in the exam do not allow the holder to correctly assess the level of mastery of the knowledge and skills targeted by the teaching.

Contacts

filippo.biondi@ulb.be

Campus

Solbosch

Method(s) of evaluation

• written examination

written examination

• Open question with short answer
• Open question with developed answer
• Closed question with multiple choices (MCQ)
• Closed question True or False (T/F)
• Question with negative count

Mark calculation method (including weighting of intermediary marks)

To pass this course, you must achieve a final grade of at least 10 out of 20 points on the exam.

Language(s) of evaluation

• english