Half-Course: Energy

Course Number 1105

Professor Forest Reinhardt
Early Fall, 15 session half course
1.5 credits
Exam

Course Requirements

The Half-Course: Energy (HC:E) is a half-course worth 1.5 credits, requiring attendance in 15 80-minute sessions in the first half of the fall term, plus a self-scheduled exam.

Career Focus

The course will benefit students who intend to participate, as managers, capital providers, or consultants, in companies involved in supplying energy services to households, firms, and other customers. It will also benefit students who may work for firms in energy-intensive or energy-related industries, including transportation companies, vehicle manufacturers, and suppliers to producers of oil, gas, and electricity. More broadly, students interested in questions of international political economy and in the economics of strategic competition will benefit from the course.

Students enrolling in HC:E are encouraged also to enroll in the Half Course: Business and the environment, in the second half of the fall term.

Educational Objectives

Without the heat, light, and mobility provided by suppliers of energy, firms, governments, and individuals could not function. Energy prices are often highly volatile, and energy firms are subject to pervasive government intervention. In the course, we try to understand the (interrelated) reasons for the price volatility and the government intervention, and the strategic implications of each.

The course applies ideas on industry structure, competitive positioning, competitive dynamics, and corporate strategy from the basic Strategy course. It applies ideas from BGIE on the rationales for government intervention in markets and on the political factors that influence government policymakers.

Students will leave the course with a broad exposure to the kinds of strategic and risk management problems that confront firms in the energy industries, with a set of analytic approaches to make sense of those problems, and with an enhanced ability to devise and implement strategies that take economic and political considerations into account.

Course Content and Organization

The course consists of three short modules, listed below with representative cases:

Energy value chains and the distribution of economic surplus
The Chad-Cameroon Pipeline; AES in China

Innovations in energy
Ethanol; oil sands; wind power

Synthesis and conclusions:
E.ON; private equity in the energy industry