Theory and Experiments on Spatial Competition.

The authors present theoretical and experimental results on spatial competition between two firms. Firms choose locations simultaneously along a line representing a linear market. Identical consumers with nonincreasing demand functions are uniformly distributed along this line. The authors solve for symmetric equilibrium payoffs in an infinitely repeated game for the case of linear demand and an arbitrary discount factor. The set of equilibria found includes both competitive and collusive payoffs. In laboratory experiments in which the final period was unknown to the players in advance, the authors observed both competitive and collusive outcomes. Nonbinding communication led to collusion. Copyright 1993 by Oxford University Press.