Duopoly experimentation: Cournot competition

Abstract This paper analyzes learning behavior in an industry facing uncertainty. We consider a duopoly game where firms have imperfect information about market demand and they learn through observing market prices. The main body of our study consists of showing how firms make the price a more informative signal through their experimental behavior, and how this behavior compares to its monopoly counterpart. We extend previous analysis to the case where the demand unknown parameter takes values on the real line. We also find that experimentation under Cournot duopoly is smaller than under monopoly whenever the demand's unknown parameter is sufficiently precise.