RMIT Classification: Trusted

ECON 1268: PRICE THEORY

SEMESTER 3, 2021

Group Assignment 3
Screen-cast Video Presentation (30%)
Due: Week 12 Sun Jan 16, 2022 by 11:59pm, Vietnam time

INSTRUCTIONS:
You are expected to work in a team to provide a video presentation. In working on the assignment, you
will develop the capability to analyse key issues relative to designated topics. Your performance in the
tasks will demonstrate your achievement of a number of the learning outcomes, in particular their ability
to use the technical tools developed in the Course. This assignment allows receiving feedback on your
progress from lecturers so that you can improve your performance in this Course.
All members are required to appear in the video as key speakers.

1. Time limitation: This is a maximum-10-minute video presentation. The video part from 10:01 minute
will NOT be marked. Note that your presentation speed may affect your performance, don’t speak
too fast or too slow. IMPORTANCE:Introduce/label your name before presenting.
2. Video quality: The video presentation MUST be well-submitted with clear voice recordings, clear
screen-casts of data calculations, good visual aids and analytical demonstration. English subtitles are
required. Don’t add any unnecessary animation/music in the slides/video.
3. Contribution: ALL MEMBERS of the group are required to be presenters and must contribute a
significant part to the presentation. Otherwise, the disappeared students will receive zero marks
and/or the group’s mark will be deducted.
4. Slide’s structure: The introduction, summary, and conclusion parts are not necessary. A cover page
showing your group members’ names, IDs are required in the first 05 seconds. The Statement of
Authorship sheet, which clearly specifies members' work allocation and needs to be signed by all
members, must be shown in the last 05 seconds of your screen-cast video clip AND must be submitted
on Canvas.
5. Support Resources: This assessment requires that you meet RMIT's expectations for academic
integrity. Additional library and learning resources are available to help with the assessment in this
course. Teachers will work during working hours and will NOT discuss the answers until when the
marks are released.

Submission instruction: Each group must submit a video presentation and the Statement of Authorship
sheet via the Canvas portal. The sheet (pdf file) clearly specifies members' work allocation and needs to
be signed by all members. The submission should be uploaded by your group representative on Canvas.
Only videos/reports that have been uploaded on the website will be marked by the teaching staff. You

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should save your completed video with "Assignment_3_ECON1268 2021C_FIRST NAME OF ALL
MEMBERS.mp4" as your filename.

Late work: Extensions to submission deadlines are allowed only as a result of a successful application for
Special Consideration (with supplementary documents of supporting evidence). Unless an extension has been
granted by the course coordinator and the Special Consideration Unit: for assignments 1 to 10 days late, a
penalty of 10% of the mark awarded for each day will apply; for assignments more than 10 days late, a penalty
of 100% will apply. Weekend days (Saturday and Sunday) are counted when counting total late days.
Task: The assignment has 3 parts. All 3 parts need to be completed.
PART 1: Monopoly
Under Decree No. 94/2017/ND-CP, there are 20 State monopoly sectors in Vietnam. The detail of
these monopoly sectors can be found in the supplement documents.
1. Select one real firm in Vietnam in one of 20 listed monopoly sectors. Discuss important characteristics
of a monopoly of your selected firm.
2. Discuss how your selected monopoly chooses the optimal quantity to produce and price to sell. Draw
relevant chart to support your discussion.
3. Discuss any possible inefficiency of your selected monopoly. Draw relevant chart to support your
discussion.

PART 2: Imperfect competition

Your lecturer will assigned to your team ONE of seven following industries in Vietnam: Automotive-
Manufacturing, Metals-Mining, Online-Retail, Oil And Gas, Power Generation, Wireless-
Telecommunication-Services and Telecommunication-Services.
You will work ONLY on industry which is assigned to your team.
Read the industrial reports from MarketLine in the supplement documents (you may need to use other
references as well) and answer the following questions:
1. Discuss whether your assigned industry can be considered as an oligopoly market. You may want to
focus your discussion on key characteristics of an oligopoly market.
2. Identify and analyse any possible types of competition that are likely to occur in your assigned industry
(Quantity competition/Price competition/ Hotelling competition/ Product differentiation). Your analysis
must be supported by concrete evidence/data/facts.

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3. Link the competition mentioned above with the game theory models discussed in the course (Cournot
competition/Bertrand competition/Hotelling model). You have to state the theoretical results of the
chosen model and discuss whether these results are likely to happen in your assigned industry.
4. Investment in technology can help firms to reduce marginal costs. Discuss any technology that has been
applied in your assigned industry help to reduce marginal costs. Discuss how the investment in
technology influence in production behaviours of firms in your assigned industry. Is market efficiency
enhancing? Briefly explain.

PART 3: US-China trade war

Watts (2019)1 mentioned on Asia Times that “Trade war turns into a game of chicken”. Explain how the
US-China trade war can be seen as the Game of Chicken (For simplicity, just consider the non-repeated
version of this game like the one in the course’s slides) and predict/discuss the results of this trade war
using game theory. In this question, you are expected to:
1. Providing the basic game settings: The type of game, number of players, possible strategies (actions)
for each player. The information about the trade war can be found here.
2. Constructing hypothetical payoffs: You need to give some numbers to represent the payoffs for each
strategy of each player in the game. To do this, you need to identify the type of payoffs (profits, utility,
amount of money…). Then, you assign an appropriate number for each strategy of the player. For
example, if the US plays strategy A and China plays strategy B then the US’s payoff is … and China’s
payoff is … After that, construct the payoff matrix for the game.
3. Finding the theoretical Nash’s Equilibrium: Based on the payoff matrix that you have constructed,
find the theoretical Nash Equilibrium of that game.
4. Discuss/predict the outcome of the REAL trade war: According to your hypothetical game, what is
the probable outcomes of the US-China trade war? Do you think that this outcome will occur in reality?
In this part, you have to collect and analyse the data about the trade war, compare what you observe
with the assumptions of the game and then discuss whether the real trade war will have the same outcome
as the game of chicken.
- End of the Assessment -

1
https://asiatimes.com/2019/11/trade-war-turns-into-a-game-of-chicken/

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