We examine the strategic use of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in imperfectly competitive markets. The level of CSR determines the weight a firm puts on consumer surplus in its objective function before it decides upon supply. First, we consider symmetric Cournot competition and show that...

We examine the strategic use of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in imperfectly competitive markets. The level of CSR determines the weight a firm puts on consumer surplus in its objective function before it decides upon supply. First, we consider symmetric Cournot competition and show that...

This paper introduces a number of game-theoretic tools to model collusive agreements among firms in vertically differentiated markets. I firstly review some classical literature on collusion between two firms producing goods of exogenous different qualities. I then extend the analysis to a...

Electronic coordination links markets at different locations that have initially been (partially) separated by transport costs. Rising competitive pressure should in turn affect incentives to differentiate products. In this paper investment decisions concerning transport cost reduction and...

This paper explores the impact of product liability on vertical product differentiation when product safety is perfectly observable. In a two-stage competition, duopolistic firms are subject to strict liability and segment the market such that a low-safety product is marketed at a low price to...

This study derives pure strategy Bertrand equilibria in a duopoly in which two firms produce a homogeneous good with convex cost functions and seek to maximize the weighted sum of their absolute and relative profits. The study shows that there exists a range of equilibrium prices in duopolistic...

We characterize the equilibrium in a homogeneous good Cournot duopoly in which firms have the choice to react to a cost-push shock by paying a lump-sum adjustment cost in order to offset the initial rise in marginal cost. Our results show that the size of the shock and the size of the adjustment...

We investigate an extended game with observable delay under duopolistic competition in affine supply functions. Firms use the intercepts of supply functions as their strategic variables. Best replies are downward (upward) sloping if the common slope of supply functions is sufficiently low...

The paper proves the existence of a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium in a vertically differentiated duopoly with uncovered market, for a large set of symmetric and asymmetric distributions of consumers, including, among others, all logconcave distributions. The proof relies on the 'income share...

In a Cournot duopoly, if only one firm hires a manager while the other remains entrepreneurial, the Cournot-Stackelberg equilibrium emerges, with the managerial firm as the leader. This happens under at least three different delegation schemes. We illustrate the different meachanisms driving...