In an industry characterised by the presence of network effects, this paper investigates a duopolistic game in which firms may choose whether to bargain over wages and employment with unions or to face a competitive labour market (i.e. without unions). If unions are sufficiently risk-averse, it...

We revisit the well known differential Cournot game with polluting emissions dating back to Benchekroun and Long (1998), proposing a version of the model in which environmental taxation is levied on emissions rather than the environmental damage. This allows to attain strong time consistency...

This paper investigates the effects of changes in retail market concentration when input prices are negotiated. Results are derived from a model of bilateral Nash-bargaining between upstream and downstream firms which allows for general forms of demand and retail competition. Whether...

I study the business practices of the Comédie française, the main theater in Paris, between 1680 and 1793. The theater was an actors' partnership and operated within a (contested) oligopoly. Newly available data provide revenues by price category for over 32,000 performances. Attendance varied...

In a free-entry Cournot oligopoly model with a quadratic utility function that yields differentiated products, it is shown that there are losses from trade when the trade cost is close to the prohibitive level. Although the total number of varieties increases, there is a reduction in consumer...

We study investments in R&D and the formation of R&D clusters of firms which are competitors in the market. In a three stage game, firms first decide on long-term R&D investment, then form research clusters according to the unanimity game introduced in Bloch(1995), and finally compete in...

This paper develops a model of the birth and death of cartels in the presence of enforcement activities by a Competition Authority (CA). We distinguish three sets of interventions: (a) detecting, prosecuting and penalizing cartels; (b) actions that aim to stop cartel activity in the short-term,...

We develop a 2×2×2 model with the following features: (1) one sector is perfectly competitive while the other is oligopolistic; (2) one country has unemployment while the other attains full employment; (3) oligopolists move internationally; and (4) the ownership of each oligopolist is...

Standard analysis of mergers in oligopolies along the lines of the popular Farrell-Shapiro Framework (FSF) relies, regarding its policy conclusions, on the assumption that rational agents will only propose privately profitable mergers. If this assumption were held, a positive external effect of...

If input markets are competitive and output per firm declines with the number of firms (business stealing effect), there will be excessive entry into a Cournot oligopoly for a homogeneous commodity. However, input markets are often imperfectly competitive and the price of labor is determined by...

In a two-country international trade model with oligopolistic competition, we study the conditions on market structure and trade costs under which a merger policy designed to benefit domestic consumers is too tough or too lenient from the viewpoint of the foreign country. Calibrating the model...

Price competition with increasing marginal costs, though relevant for many markets, appears as an under-researched field in the experimental oligopoly literature. We provide results from an experiment that varies the number of firms as well as the demand rationing and matching schemes in...

This study provides a comprehensive picture of experimental Kreps-Scheinkman markets with capacity choice in the first stage and subsequent price competition at the second. We conduct seven different treatments of such markets, varying the number of firms, the demand rationing scheme, the...

This study is the first to investigate the effect of demand rationing in experimental Bertrand-Edgeworth markets with fixed exogenous capacities. It is found that prices and profits are significantly higher under proportional than under efficient demand rationing. Moreover, the amount of...

This study compares energy and emission taxes used to control pollution and provide incentives for the adoption of an advanced abatement technology in a Cournot oligopoly. We examine multistage games where the government may intervene in order to maximize social welfare by setting an...

We consider choice of options for a foreign innovating firm to license its technology for producing the high quality good to a domestic firm, or to enter the market of the domestic country with or without license. Under the assumption of uniform distribution about taste parameters of consumers;...

If an additional competitor reduces output per firm in a homogenous Cournot-oligopoly, market entry will be excessive. Taxes can correct the so-called business stealing externality. We investigate how evading a tax on operating profits affects the excessive entry prediction. Tax evasion raises...

If an additional competitor reduces output per firm in a homogenous Cournot-oligopoly, market entry will be excessive. Taxes can correct the so-called business stealing externality. We investigate how evading a tax on operating profits affects the excessive entry prediction. Tax evasion raises...

We study firms' advertising strategies in an oligopolistic market in which both non-comparative and comparative advertising are present. We show that in equilibrium firms mix over the two types of advertising, with the intensity of comparative advertising exceeding that of non-comparative...

We revisit the discussion about the relationship between price's cyclical features, implicit collusion and the demand level in an oligopoly supergame where a positive shock may hit demand and disrupt collusion. The novel feature of our model consists in characterising the post-shock...

Seitdem sich im Lauf des letzten Jahres die Rohölpreise nahezu halbiert haben, wird viel darüber spekuliert, wie deren zukünftiger Verlauf sein könnte. In seinem Kommentar befasst sich Georg Erber, European Productivity Research Center, mit dem Einfluss der OPEC und der USA auf die Erdölpreise.

Taxation under oligopoly is analysed in a general equilibrium setting where the firms are large relative to the size of the economy and maximise the utility of their shareholders. It turns out that the model is an aggregative game, which simplifies the comparative statics for the effects of...