We propose a Multi-Agent framework to analyze the dynamics of organizational survival in cooperation networks. Firms can decide to cooperate horizontally (in the same market) or vertically with other firms that belong to the supply chain. Cooperation decisions are based on economic variables. We have defined a variant of the density dependence model to set up the dynamics of the survival in the...

This study proposes the use of marginal abatement cost curves to calculate environmental damages of agricultural systems in China's Loess Plateau. Total system costs and revenues, management characteristics and pollution attributes are imputed into a directional output distance function, which is then used to determine shadow prices and abatement cost curves for soil and nitrogen loss. Marginal...

The identical agent, identical good Bertrand game is associated with prices at marginal cost the Bertrand Paradox. If consumers make occasional mistakes I show that the standard Bertrand game gives rise to positive profits and prices above marginal cost. Some firms charge low prices to capture the bulk of the sales while others charge high prices selling to mistaken consumers. Furthermore, with...

I show that Swan’s (1970) independence result requires a multiplicative interaction between durability and all other quality attributes. Because there is no compelling argument for a multiplicativity in quality, monopolists tend to distort durability, even with constant marginal costs. Distortions in durability and other quality aspects are aligned exactly when the marginal cost of quality do n...

For the Cournot model, several authors studied the impact of a marginal cost variation on consumers’ surplus, firms’ profits and social welfare. We unify and extend the results when all the marginal costs change simultaneously, the direction and the magnitude of the variation being firm-specific.

This article examines "consistent" conjectural variations in an oligopoly model with a homogeneous product. A conjectural variation is consistent if it is equivalent to the optimal response of the otherfirms at the equilibrium defined by that conjecture. When the number of firms is fixed, we find that competitive behavior is consistent when marginal costs are constant, but that when marginal co...

We explore the case for monopolistic price flexibility in a linear setting. With different marginal costs, by changing the production mix price differentiation can improve welfare and also aggregate consumer surplus even if total output does not increase (as in the linear case). This depends on the variability of cost and demand parameters, and on their correlation. We also show that the welfar...