Oligopoly Models for Product Differentiation PDF Download

Author: Rune Stenbacka
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789516492370
Category : Competition, Imperfect
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Author: James Friedman
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521282444
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
James Friedman provides a thorough survey of oligopoly theory using numerical examples and careful verbal explanations to make the ideas clear and accessible. While the earlier ideas of Cournot, Hotelling, and Chamberlin are presented, the larger part of the book is devoted to the modern work on oligopoly that has resulted from the application of dynamic techniques and game theory to this area of economics. The book begins with static oligopoly theory. Cournot's model and its more recent elaborations are covered in the first substantive chapter. Then the Chamberlinian analysis of product differentiation, spatial competition, and characteristics space is set out. The subsequent chapters on modern work deal with reaction functions, advertising, oligopoly with capital, entry, and oligopoly using noncooperative game theory. A large bibliography is provided.

Author: Allen Maurice Russell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780868394190
Category : Oligopolies
Languages : en
Pages : 15

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Author: Simon P. Anderson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262011280
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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"The discrete choice approach provides an ideal framework for describing the demands for differentiated products and can be used for studying most product differentiation models in the literature. By introducing extra dimensions of product heterogeneity, the framework also provides richer models of firm location and product selection."--BOOK JACKET.

Author: John Beath
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521335522
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
There are few industries in modern market economies that do not manufacture differentiated products. This book provides a systematic explanation and analysis of the widespread prevalence of this important category of products. The authors concentrate on models in which product selection is endogenous. In the first four chapters they consider models that try to predict the level of product differentiation that would emerge in situations of market equilibrium. These market equilibria with differentiated products are characterised and then compared with social welfare optima. Particular attention is paid to the distinction between horizontal and vertical differentiation as well as to the related issues of product quality and durability. This book brings together the most important theoretical contributions to these topics in a succinct and coherent manner. One of its major strengths is the way in which it carefully sets out the basic intuition behind the formal results. It will be useful to advanced undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in industrial economics and microeconomic theory.

Author: Anna Nagurney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This paper develops a new dynamic model of Cournot-Nash oligopolistic competition that includes production and transportation costs, product differentiation, and quality levels in a network framework. The production costs capture the total quality cost, which, in turn, can also represent the R&D cost. We first present the equilibrium version and derive alternative variational inequality formulations. We then construct the projected dynamical systems model, which provides a continuous-time evolution of the firms' product shipments and product quality levels, and whose set of stationary points coincides with the set of solutions to the variational inequality problem. We establish stability analysis results using a monotonicity approach and construct a discrete-time version of the continuous-time adjustment process, which yields an algorithm, with closed form expressions at each iteration. The algorithm is then utilized to compute solutions to several numerical examples. The framework can serve as the foundation for the modeling and analysis of competition among firms in industries ranging from food to pharmaceuticals to durable goods and high tech products, as well as Internet services, where quality and product differentiation are seminal.

Author: Koji Okuguchi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662026228
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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In this book a rigorous, systematic, mathematical analysis is presented for oligopoly with multi-product firms in static as well as dynamic frameworks in the light of recent developments in theories of games, oligopoly and industrial organization. The general results derived in this book on oligopoly with multi-product firms contain, as special cases, all previous results on oligopoly with single product as well as oligopoly with product differentiation and single product firms. A constructive nu- merical method is given for finding the Cournot-Nash equilibrium, which may be extremely valuable to those who are interested in numerical analysis of the effects of various industrial policies. A sequential adjustment process is also formulated for finding the equilibrium. Dynamic adjustment processes have two versions, one with a discrete time scale and the other with a continuous time scale. The stability of the equilibrium is thoroughly investigated utilizing powerful mathematical results from the stability and linear algebra literature. The methodology developed for analyzing stability proves to be useful for dynamic analysis of economic models.

Author: James A. Brander
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Competition
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This paper provides a new and simple model of endogenous horizontal product differentiation based on a standard demand structure derived from quadratic utility. One objective of the paper is to explain the "empirical Bertrand paradox" - the failure to observe homogeneous product Bertrand oligopoly, while homogeneous product Cournot oligopoly has significant empirical relevance. In our model firms invest in product differentiation if differentiation investments are sufficiently effective (i.e. if differentiation is not too costly). The threshold level of differentiation effectiveness needed to induce such investments is an order of magnitude less for Bertrand firms than for Cournot firms. Thus there is a wide range over which Bertrand firms differentiate their products but Cournot firms do not. If Cournot firms do choose to differentiate their products, corresponding Bertrand firms always differentiate more. We also establish the important insight that if product differentiation is endogenous Bertrand firms may charge higher prices and earn higher profits than corresponding Cournot firms, in contrast to the general presumption that Bertrand behavior is more competitive than Cournot behavior. Interestingly, consumer surplus increases with differentiation in the Cournot model but, due to sharply increasing prices, decreases with differentiation in the Bertrand model.

Author: James A. Brander
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Competition
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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This paper investigates the effect of endogenous horizontal product differentiation on trade patterns and the gains from trade under Bertrand and Cournot oligopoly. Firms differentiate their products to mitigate competition, but only if the investment required is not too high. Investment in product differentiation takes place in a much wider range of cases and results in a greater difference between products under Bertrand than Cournot competition. In our model, trade in homogeneous products never takes place under Bertrand competition: Bertrand firms export only if they differentiate their products. Cournot firms may trade in either homogeneous or differentiated products. If there is trade, consumers tend to be better off with Bertrand than Cournot competition due to greater product differentiation and more aggressive pricing, but higher levels of investment can raise Bertrand profit above Cournot profit and also above the monopoly profit at autarky when investment costs are sufficiently low.

Author: K. Okuguchi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642463479
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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Book Description
Ever since A.C.Cournot(1838), economists have been increasingly interested in oligopoly, a state of industry where firms producing homogeneous goods or close substitutes are limited in number. The fewness of firms in oligopoly gives rise to interdependence which they have to take into account in choosing their optimal output or pricing policies in each production period. Since each firm's profit is a function of all firms' outputs in an oligopoly without product differ entiation, each firm in choosing its optimal output in any period has to know beforehand all other rival firms' outputs in the same period. As this is in general impossible, it has to form some kind of expecta tion on other firms' most likely outputs. Cournot thought that in each period each firm assumed that all its rivals' outputs would remain at the same level as in the preceding period. Needless to say, the Cournot assumption is too naive to be realistically supported. However, the Cournot profit maximizing oligopoly model characterized by this assumption has many important and attractive properties from the view point of economic theory and provides a frame of reference for more realistic theories of oligopoly. In Chapters 1-3, we shall be engaged in analyzing the Cournot oligopoly model in greater detail from the viewpoints of existence, stability, uniqueness and quasi-competitive ness of the equilibrium.