Profit loss in Cournot oligopolies

A Stable Market Structure as the Solution for Cournot Oligopolies

A stable market structure is a partition of the firms in an industry such that there is no incentive for any breakups or mergers. Characterizing such stability requires an endogenization of both the core and Cournot equilibrium as well as all hybrid equilibria. This paper solves for the stable partitions in a general oligopoly by providing a tractable condition: a partition is stable if and onl...

Cournot versus Walras in Dynamic Oligopolies with Memory

This paper explores the impact of memory in Cournot oligopolies where firms learn through imitation of success as suggested in Alchian (1950) and modeled in Vega-Redondo (1997). As long as memory includes at least one period, the long-run outcome corresponds to any quantity between the Cournot one and the Walras one. The (evolutionary) stability of the walrasian outcome relies on inter-firm com...

The Stability of Nash-Cournot Equilibria in Labor Managed Oligopolies

Multimarket Oligopolies with Restricted Market Access

We study the existence of Cournot equilibria in multimarket oligopolies under the additional restriction that every firm may sell its product only to a limited number of markets simultaneously. This situation naturally arises if market entry is subject to a valid license and each firm holds a fixed number of licenses only, or, equivalently, if the firms’ short-term assets only suffice to serve ...

The δ-core and Stable Partitions in Asymmetric Oligopolies

This paper solves merger formation problem in Cournot oligopolies by a cooperative and computational approach. In three-firm linear oligopolies, monopoly will be formed (or be stable) if its merging cost is sufficiently low and cost differentials are sufficiently large. When monopoly is unprofitable due to high merging costs, a profitable two-member merger will be formed if its efficient member...