Spring 2027

Industrial Organization and Imperfect Competition

Overview of industrial organization theory covering oligopoly, monopolistic competition, product differentiation, and dynamic industry behavior under uncertainty.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 8

Past student reviews · Rasmus Lentz

Students described the homework as impossible with no guiding examples, and noted that board notes could get messy. The course relied on board work rather than a textbook.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Describe and model how firms acquire and maintain market power.

  • Describe and model how firms exercise market power.

  • Describe and model the implications of market power for economic efficiency and social welfare.

  • Describe and model when and how a government can intervene to improve outcomes.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
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AB
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

(ECON 301 or 311) and (MATH 217 or 221)

ECON 468

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

JEAN-FRANCOIS HOUDE is recorded teaching in Fall 2006, Spring 2008, Fall 2009, Fall 2010, Spring 2012, Fall 2018, Fall 2019. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Rasmus Lentz, Jean-Francois Houde

Past students found the course demanding and sometimes confusing, with assessments described as tough. Some instructors were viewed as knowledgeable and passionate, while others were criticized for poor organization and explanation.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2022: 3.12 GPA, 58.7% A/AB (n=46 letter grades); Spring 2025: 3.47 GPA, 71.1% A/AB (n=76 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.88 GPA, 95.5% A/AB (n=44 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Rasmus Lentz

Students described the homework as impossible with no guiding examples, and noted that board notes could get messy. The course relied on board work rather than a textbook.

Past student reviews · Jean-Francois Houde

A student found the lectures and problem sets awful, noting that the instructor did not practice exam-related problems in class and explained topics poorly.

Topics

  • Theory of industrial organization
  • Oligopolistic behavior
  • Monopolistic competition
  • Product differentiation
  • Dynamic behavior of competitive industries under uncertainty

Skills

  • Modeling how firms acquire and maintain market power
  • Modeling how firms exercise market power
  • Analyzing implications of market power for economic efficiency and social welfare
  • Modeling government intervention to improve economic outcomes

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2026— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Spring 2026

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "6ce61276e89ca534470f0a7f1d1a5d1c59396a6c4e4173b86e419e6b8ae97332",
  "requirements_status": "needs_review",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}