MGT 830: Quantitative Modeling for Competitive Strategy

Instructor:

Alessandro Gavazza

55 Hillhouse, room 303

Telephone: (203)-432-5956

Email: alessandro.gavazza@yale.edu

Office Hours: By Appointment

Administrative Assistant:

Marianne Castellon

55 Hillhouse, room 004

Telephone: (203) 432-5970

Email: marianne.castellon@yale.edu

Course Webpage:

Course information and documents will be posted on the course webpage on classesv2. You should check the webpage for handouts and any changes to the schedule.

Goals of the class:

Frequently in your career, you will need to use data to make business decisions. The basic objective of this course is to provide you with some statistical techniques to make such decisions.

Today corporations have very precise data on costs, sales, prices, consumers, competitors, etc. Very often, managers lack the statistical skills to analyze these data and statisticians lack the managerial skills to interpret them. The course provides a first step in filling this gap by integrating statistical tools and economic/strategic ideas.

The course has two main goals. The first goal is to make you an informed consumer of quantitative research. When the media, a consultant, or the marketing department of your company will present you some conclusions or suggestions based upon empirical research, you will be able to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. You will understand what separates good and poor research and develop a vocabulary for critiquing research. With these skills, you will be able to make more informed decisions when you contract for primary research with some organization.

The second goal of the course is for you to develop the skills necessary for supporting your arguments with data. You will learn to analyze real data. You will see how such analyses can help you make better business decisions. You will also learn how effective ways of presenting the findings from a statistical analysis as evidence in support of your ideas.

In summary, the main objective of the class is to teach you when and how to use statistical tools for answering business questions.

By the end of this course, I expect you:

- to become confident analyzing and working with datasets;

- to reinforce your statistical background;

- to learn new statistical tools;

- to learn how to apply these tools to business problems.

Statistical software:

The statistical analysis must be performed in STATA. I will introduce the software in the first classes and provide you with a primer.

Stata is a very powerful statistical package and reasonably user-friendly. It will allow you to perform more sophisticated analysis than Excel. Stata is also the package of choice of the academic community and most consulting firms.

Grading:

Your course grade will be based on 4 assignments and class participation. Each assignment counts for 20% of the grade. Class participation accounts for the remaining 20%.

On each assignment, you will work in groups. We will form the groups depending on class enrollment. LATE ASSIGNMENTS WILL RECEIVE A PENALTY.

Class participation is very important. Obviously, you will be judged on the quality of your contributions and not on the quantity.

Honor Code:

The code of student conduct for all Yale SoM students is contained in the Bulletin. All students should have received a copy of this booklet. Questions of academic dishonesty, cheating, plagiarism and other violations, and the terms and conditions are all listed in the Bulletin.

Course Outline:

We will start the class introducing the basics of Stata. We will then cover different topics. For each topic, I have tried to match an economic/managerial question with a statistical tool. There will be 4 assignments and results will be presented in class.