Harvests' lifespan and North–South market share rivalry

Article history: Received 3 March 2014 Received in revised form 18 November 2014 Accepted 18 November 2014 Available online 26 November 2014 We consider a North–South duopolistic competition in the market of a perishable good. North's harvest can be sold over two periods whereas South's harvest can be sold in the first period only, because of the lack of storage technology.Weexamine the impact of the availability of a storage technology in South that would allow it to sell its harvest over two periods. We identify situations inwhich bothNorth and South see their profits decrease and situations inwhich bothNorth and South enjoy larger profits when the lifespan of South's harvest increases. Our findings can be useful to assess the support for policy interventions that aim at transferring better technologies to South. There are cases where North and South's industries will both push for (or both resist) the transfer of a technology to South that will lengthen the lifespan of its product. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. JEL classification: Q16 Q13 O11 O30