Modern Industrial Organization

There's everything to like about the content of the textbook. It reads clearly, and goes into detail when it is required. It keeps much of the nasty technicalities in appendices. The coverage is excellent, and has a good mix of theory and real-world cases and examples. This textbook is aimed at upper-undergraduate IO courses, but would still be a reinforcing read for post-graduate IO. If I were to write a textbook, I would write it in a similar way.Some content is a bit strange though...for example in perfect competition, they assume price taking from the outset - doing away with the assumptions of free entry and many firms. I'm a little uncomfortable with this. It's a bit strange when at a later stage they emphasise how important free entry is, when it wasn't presented as a central assumption.I'm a little disappointed though at the finish of the paperback version (having said that I don't think I can complain given its price). Everything is black and white and in different shades of grey, printed on stiff coarse paper. The spine is incredibly weak given the thickness of the book. It is impossible to get the book to stay on a particular page without destroying the spine. The greyscale printing is awkward when you read the text - it will refer to blue lines on diagrams (as the hardback version is in colour) when it is actually grey. not only this, the grey is actually presented in a pixelated way. If you wish to keep this book for reference forever (like how I intend to), I think it is best to get the hardback version (despite costing quite a bit more).But otherwise it is a very good textbook.

[Update: Finished the course where this was the text. As expected, the spine split in several spots. Bumped this up to 4 stars because the content itself really is quite good. Could use some more worked out problems and this text was supplemented with a game theory book. If you are in a Ph.D. program, you may want to take a separate game theory class before taking IO. There are plenty of $30 programming books of similar size with much better bindings, so maybe the publisher is trying to hurt the used book market by making the binding so bad this book can only be used for one semester.]This is a pedantic review about something other than the content, butI've rarely been so annoyed by the typesetting of a $200 book.The publisher should be ashamed. The book was obviously layed out forone of those over-sized glossy color books, but someone change hismind at the last minute and they did a cost reduction by releasingthis as an 800+ page black and white paperback. They did this withoutgoing back and adjusting the layout or even changing the macros usedfor boldface and such.This didn't work out well. They shrunk the pages so everything seemsto be in 9-point type. Subheadings and emphasis were originally allin some other color, but now they come out as light-grey so are verydifficult to read. Exterior margins are still a full two inches ofwasted space, but the interior margins are sub-half-inch on a 800+page non-lay flat paperback. If you actually need to read the wholething the spine will be broken and pages will fall out before you aredone.

This is an excellent text, written by two very prominent economists in the Industrial Organization and Antitrust Economics literatures. Unfortunately, the production quality of this book is poor. Granted it is a paperback edition, however the print quality of the pages is too low. Many of the descriptions pointing to figures refer to the colors depicted, but it has been printed in black and white and in low resolution.It's a real shame, because the text is excellent. The printers have let the authors down.

This book must have been bound with the same stuff that binds notepads. Within days of using this book, the binding was already falling apart. Honestly, after buying the physical copy, I immediately started looking for an ebook somewhere, but without any luck. Some of my fellow classmates had found hardback copies which held much better. This book gets its only two stars strictly from the information it contains. It is very comprehensive, giving examples of even some of the most obscure fields of industrial organization and many references for those interested in further study. I'm seriously considering buying the 3rd edition just so I have a book rather than a bunch of loose papers.

The package arrived today, very beat up, barely still taped together. I assumed it as simply the mail service. However, the book itself is barely holding on. The entire length of the spine is being held together by clear tape, including both the front and back covers. The book seems greatly discolored and has a faint but unpleasant smell to it.

There was a lot of writing in the book and also hi- lighter was used throughout . I would never have bought the book if I knew it was in that condition

BRAND NEW AND SHIPPED ON TIME

I'm busty reading this the second time - the first time I ran into Oligopolies and showed my mental limitations. It's printed 3 colours (plus my highlighter) has an uncracked spine for all my rereading, and is written with a wryness that I (British) appreciate. Yes, it could do with more mathematical exzmples (how long do you want it to be? It does say that you should have done some microeconomics before tackling it, and that's where one could have exercised a calculator and graphs.The content is very solid and takes no prisoners, but there are internet suggestions and summaries. I like it's "warts and all" attitude. An Electrical Cartel? Exposed. What were the penalties? Why are they still doing it? The death of Madoff dhould remind us that ignorance is still king (how long did it take to book him?)...and this sort of book is part of the necessary dialogue.One gripe = make the third colour red! We Europeans are used to it...

El libro tiene tópicos de teoría de la competencia para estudiantes a nivel intermedio.