Guidelines for Managerial Economics Project

As part of this course, you are expected to work in groups and submit a comprehensive
report in the form of an article on an Indian product/firm. The purpose of this project is
to understand and apply concepts of Microeconomics studied in the class to a real life
context. You will be expected to choose a product/firm and apply concepts learnt in
class to the selected firm.

You are expected to write a 800 word article on the Indian product/ firm that is worthy
of publication in a leading newspaper as an Op-Ed or a perspective article in the Turn
Turn Turn (IIM B Blog). While writing the article you should first determine the main
issue on which you wish to base your article. Please make your conclusions and
recommendations about the firm’s product based on rigorous analysis like demand
and/or supply estimation using primary or secondary data sources. You will be evaluated
on the accuracy of your understanding of the concept and the way in which you use
verifiable evidences to make your conclusions.

Each group should designate a group co-ordinator who should submit three options of
companies/ product (in decreasing order of preference) to the instructor through Moodle
latest by 5 pm on August 17, 2020 through Moodle. Project will be allocated on a first-
come first-served basis.
1. Company 1
2. Company 2
3. Company 3

The deliverables along with the dates are indicated in the next section of this outline.
The deadlines for each of these deliverables will be strictly adhered to. Failure in not
respecting the deadlines will lead to penalization for all the group members.

1. Each group must submit via Moodle a presentation consisting of 2 slides

describing the main issue that you will base the article on and the data source,
variables that you will use to estimate the demand for the firm by 5 pm on 31st
August 2020.

2. All the groups must submit via Moodle their final presentations to the faculty,
and submit a soft copy of their presentation slides to the faculty via Moodle
before the day of the presentation. The presentation schedule will be drawn
later and everyone will be informed accordingly. Email (to the respective
faculty) and hard copies of the report should be submitted as instructed. The
word limit for the report is 800 words excluding non-text exhibits. Use
appendices to provide supporting material if elaborate analysis or models to back
your recommendations are required. Late submissions will not be accepted.
 Each report must consist of the following

Demand Estimation

 Using the estimation techniques learnt in class, the group must estimate the
demand and/or supply function for the product. If the context requires that
different demand function be estimated for different sections of consumers then
this justification must be made empirically and different market demands should
be estimated using the data available. The detail estimation of demand can be
relegated to the Appendix, while you can use the inferences of the estimation for
your main article.

 You can use data sources available on the IIM Bangalore Library portal like
CMIE Commodities, CMIE Consumer Pyramids, Marketline, Nielsen Datasets

Each report can some but not necessarily all topics listed below. Whichever concepts
you use you must try and integrate them to write a comprehensive report or article.

 The definition of the relevant industry that the firm competes in. Comment on
the market structure of the industry. The market share of the firm and the market
conditions of this industry.

Firm Behavior and Choice

 Discussion on the production process of this product/service. What is the

composition of different types of costs (fixed or variable)? A critical analysis of
the cost structure. Are there diminishing returns, presence of economies of scale
and scope?

Strategic Behavior

 Consider a strategic scenario that was of particular concern or interest to the

company with respect to the product. Comment on why was it strategic. How it
can be represented as a game? How did the company react in this scenario?

Please acknowledge sources of all data/information used and provide a complete list of references. If
you refer to any other material (newspaper article, website, blog, egroup, etc.) in writing your project
reports, this must be explicitly acknowledged with full citations. The project reports should be
submitted as MS Word documents to the instructor. The instructor will process your reports through
TurnitIn.com to check for plagiarism. Grading will be based on the quality of analysis, rather than
simple collection, collation, and presentation of data.

Faculty will be available for consultation on the project for the duration of the term.