Cournot conjectures under price competition

Cournot Competition under Uncertainty∗

We analyze Cournot competition under demand uncertainty. We show that under rather general assumptions, the game has no asymmetric equilibria but multiple symmetric equilibria. Multiplicity is caused by the requirement of nonnegative prices and remains an issue also for simple demand specifications, such as the linear case. We then show that uniqueness of equilibrium is guaranteed if uncertaint...

Welfare losses under Cournot competition

In a market for a homogeneous good where firms are identical, compete in quantities and produce with constant returns, the percentage of welfare losses (PWL) is small with as few as five competitors for a class of demand functions which includes linear and isoelastic cases. We study markets with positive fixed costs and asymmetric firms. We provide exact formulae of PWL and robust constructions...

R&D subsidies under asymmetric Cournot competition

Capacity precommitment and price competition yield the Cournot outcome

We introduce a simple model of oligopolistic competition where firms first build capacity, and then, after observing the capacity decisions, choose a reservation price at which they are willing to supply their capacities. This model describes many markets more realistically than the model of Kreps and Scheinkman [Kreps, D., Scheinkman, J., 1983. Quantity precommitment and Bertrand competition y...

Price Competition under Limited Comparability∗

This paper studies market competition when firms can influence consumers’ ability to compare market alternatives, through their choice of price “formats”. We introduce random graphs as a tool for modeling limited comparability of formats. Our main results concern the interaction between firms’ equilibrium price and format decisions and its implications for industry profits and consumer switchin...