COURSE NUMBER: MBA212.1
This course is
cross-listed with the Evening and Weekend MBA Program
COURSE TITLE: Business Strategies for Energy and the
Environment
UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 Units
INSTRUCTOR: James Bushnell and Catherine Wolfram
E-MAIL ADDRESS: bushnell@haas.berkeley.edu and
wolfram@haas.berkeley.edu
CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION (HTTP URL):
http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/wolfram/212/index.html
MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Thursdays, 6:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
PREREQUISITE(S): Microeconomics (MBA201A or its equivalent).
The course will also build on the
finance core course (MBA203 or its equivalent).
CLASS FORMAT: Classes will be a mixture of lectures and case
discussions.
REQUIRED
BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Grades will be based on a midterm, a
final and participation in two in-class market simulations.
ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
Over the past 30 years, managers in many transportation,
information technology, and energy companies have had to devise strategies to
cope with changes in economic and environmental regulations and the evolution
of new markets and trading platforms. The energy industries feature a complex
mix of regulation and market-driven incentives. Over the last decade,
industries that had previously been viewed as staid and conservative have been
rocked by deregulation initiatives, the California electricity crises, the
Enron scandal, rising commodity prices, and a growing focus on climate change.
Drawing on the tools of economics and finance, we study the
business and public policy issues that these changes have raised in energy
markets. Topics include the development and effect of organized spot, futures,
and derivative markets in energy; the political economy of deregulation;
climate change, environmental impacts and policies related to energy production
and use; privatization of publicly owned energy assets; market power and
antitrust; and the transportation and storage of energy commodities. We examine
the economic determinants of industry structure and evolution of competition
among firms in these industries; investigate successful and unsuccessful strategies
for entering new markets and competing in existing markets; and analyze the
rationale for and effects of public policies in energy markets.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES:
Catherine Wolfram:
Catherine Wolfram is an associate professor of business
administration at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. She has taught
core microeconomics to daytime and evening students and won the teaching award
from the evening students in 2006. Her research focuses on how market and
regulatory environments affect firms’ strategies, and she has focused on the
energy industries. For example, she has studied electricity industry
privatization and restructuring around the world and, in recent work, she is
evaluating the effects of policies designed to address climate change on the
stock of electric generating plants. She received a PhD in economics from MIT.
Before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she was an assistant professor of
economics at
James Bushnell:
James Bushnell is Research Director of the