This paper shows that the adoption of flexible manufacturing techniques by firms leads to a tougher price regime. This need not benefit consumers since the tougher regime deters entry and facilitates segmented market structures.

It is shown that a fixed cost of nominal price changes enhances the ability of firms to collude in an ologopolistic market for a homogeneous good. Nevertheless, harsh price competition with firms making no profit remains a possible outcome. The analysis focuses on stable symmetric steady states...

Bertrand argued that price would be driven down to marginal cost even with only two firms in the market. Chamberlin, by introducing product differentiation, argued that price will exceed marginal cost even when there are many firms. Thus product differentiation resolves the "Bertrand Paradox"....

This paper considers an incumbent firm that is faced with a potential entrant in a vertically differentiated market. It demonstrates than an incumbent firm cannot prevent entry through product proliferation because of a commitment problem.

We study in this paper how the technological flexibility choices and equilibrium configurations depend first on the industry characteristics (demand function and cost parameters specific to the multiproduct flexible technology and to the product dedicated technologies) and, second, on the...

We show that whether observing technological choices made by the competitors is possible or not has significant impact on the equilibrium technological configurations. Depending upon the industry characteristics, the strategic value of technological flexibility may be either positive or...

This paper estimates a model of retail oligopoly where consumers choose between stores using consumer data which specifies the firm operating the chosen store and not the specific store (as is convenient practice for retail surveys). The location and other characteristics of the stores are...

This paper analyzes the problem of altering the cost structure within an oligopoly, in the presence of costs of manipulation. Oligopolistic firms (which differ from each other in production costs) compete a la Cournot in the second stage, taking as given firm-specific taxes or input prices. In...

In a a two period model of strategic entry deterrence (a la Dixit, 1980) where the incumbent firm moves before the entrant by installing capacity for production, in a (perfect) equilibrium excess capacity is not observed under a deterministic demand. The question whether this result remains...

This paper studies a strategic market game where agents fragment their bids on different markets. Simple conditions for existence of an interior equilibrium point are provided. In equilibrium, all agents are active on the same markets and prices are identical across markets, so that all...