Search results for "Oligopoly"
showing 10 items of 41 documents
Industrial organization with profit rate maximizing firms
1995
We study the impact on industrial organization of the switching of objective function, from pure profit to profit rate maximization. The output level of firm is lower at optimum. This lead to a new conception of efficiency. Cases of no coordination are considered. In perfect competition, price signal disappears; factors remain paid at their marginal productivity, but modified. In imperfect competition, reaction functions may vanish even if collusion remains possible; limit of oligopoly remains perfect competition of profit rate; the paradox of Bertrand may remain; a new concept is studied: mixed duopoly, where firms can choose and change their objective.
Farsighted R&D networks
2014
We analyze the formation of bilateral R&D collaborations in an oligopoly when each firm benefits from the research done by other firms it is connected to. In contrast to myopic stability, farsighted stability leads to R&D networks consisting of two minimally connected components, with the largest one comprising three-quarters of firms.
The Classical Notion of Competition Revisited
2013
This article seeks to fill a lacuna within classical economics concerning the process of market price determination in situations of market disequilibrium. To this aim, first we distinguish the classical notion of free competition from the Walrasian notion of perfect competition and we argue that the latter is beset with some theoretical difficulties alien to the former. Second, we reconstruct in some detail Smith’s and Marx’s views concerning market price determination and show that Marx’s extensive use of metaphors and numerical examples foreshadows the modern taxonomy of buyers’ market, sellers’ market, and mixed strategy equilibrium in the capacity space of a standard Bertrand duopoly m…
More firms, more competition? The case of the fourth operator in France's mobile phone market
2010
Accepted, Forthcoming; International audience; To foster competition the French government authorized a fourth operator, ‘Free', to enter the country's mobile phone market at the end of 2009 alongside Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom (BT), who held respectively one-half, one-third and one-sixth of the market. By using a stylized model of France's phone market, we have examined what we call the regulator's nightmares and dreams. If Cournot competition is in place before Free's entry, minimizing the total profit fails to maximize the consumer surplus and the total surplus; the maximum most realistic price fall is 6.7% compared to three-way competition and could be 1.7% only; if Orange, SFR an…
Competition with targeted product design: Price, variety, and welfare
2018
Abstract We consider the price and welfare effects of competition in targeted product design, in the context of the Salop circle model. Changes in product design lead to demand rotations that set the stage for our analysis. With an exogenous number of firms, we show that the degree of targeted product design tends to increase with the number of firms. Moreover, under reasonable conditions, price-increasing competition takes place, for intermediate levels of the number of firms. This effect is associated with the possibility of lower consumer welfare. With endogenous firm entry, an interesting insight from our analysis is that in some situations an increase in market size or a technological …
Product-market integration with endogenous firm heterogeneity
2021
Abstract This paper proposes a general equilibrium oligopoly model in which firm heterogeneity is endogenously reproduced through technology adoption decisions. The model can explain persistent oligopolistic market structures and prices in spite of free entry and market enlargement. Moreover, strong selection might deteriorate average cost efficiency due to strategic interactions. Integrating identical countries can be welfare-improving. But distributional issues and tensions between welfare and scale economies may arise. The theory can be motivated by recent evidence on oligopolistic market structures resisting globalization forces.
INTERNATIONALIZATION STRATEGIES IN OLIGOPOLY WITH HETEROGENEOUS FIRMS
2016
This paper examines the foreign direct investment (FDI) versus exports decision of foreign oligopolistic firms under cost heterogeneity. An additional motivation for firms to invest abroad is the technological sourcing via spillovers, which flow from the host more efficient firm to foreign less advantaged firms. For intermediate values of the set-up costs associated with FDI entry, it is shown that foreign firms choose opposite entry strategies. An equilibrium where the less efficient foreign firm exports whereas the more efficient invests is more likely to happen when foreign firms become more heterogeneous, the larger the trade costs and not too big oligopolistic profitability. Interestin…
Merger policy in innovative industries
2016
We analyze optimal merger policy in R&D-intensive industries with product innovation aiming to improve the quality of products. Our results suggest that a permissive merger policy is rarely optimal in high-tech industries when the antitrust authority considers a welfare standard that balances the impact of mergers on con- sumers’ surplus and firms’ profits. In particular, relative to a benchmark where the effects from R&D are absent, we show that the optimal merger policy should not be substantially more permissive in the presence of those effects from R&D. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
The Paper Industry in Germany, 1800–2000
2012
Germany is the biggest paper exporter in the world, the biggest paper producer in Europe and the fourth biggest producer in the world. It is also the biggest market in Europe and a major export market for European pulp producers. However, only three German pulp and paper companies made it to the top 100 list of the industry in 2010 and none made it into the top 50 (PPI 2011). This article describes the development of the German industry from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present in order to explain the factors contributing to this unusual state of affairs in a country which, during the second Industrial Revolution, created major players in the new global oligopolies in chem…
Cross-country comparisons of competition and pricing power in European banking
2009
Abstract Studies of banking competition and competitive behavior both within and across countries typically utilise only one of the few measures that are available. In trying to assess the relative competitive position of banking markets in 14 European countries, existing indicators of competition are found to give conflicting predictions across countries, within countries, and over time. This is because indicators of competition tend to measure different things and are additionally influenced by cross-country differences in cost efficiency, fee income levels, real economic growth and inflation. We attempt to separate bank pricing power from these embodied influences and derive more consist…