We provide an extensive and general investigation of the effecst on industry performance - profits, social welfare and price-cost margins - of exogenously changing the number of firms in Cournot markets. This includes an in-depth exploration of the well-known trade-off between competition and...

This paper first introduces an approach relying on market games to examine how successive oligopolies do operate between downstream and upstream markets. This approach is then compared with the traditional analysis of oligopolistic interaction in successive markets. The market outcomes resulting...

We consider a stage-game where the entrant may simultaneously commit to its product's quality and the level of its production capacity before price competition takes place. We show that capacity limitation is more effective than quality reduction as a way to induce entry accommodation: the...

In a model of horizontal product differentiation, we show that local monopolies may exist under free entry when capital is perfectly mobile. In contrast both with the situation of restricted entry and with the zero-profit approach to free entry outcomes of Salop (1979), the unit profit rate of...

In this paper we address the following question: is it more profitable, for an entrant in a differentiated market, to acquire an existing firm than to compete? We illustrate the answer by considering competition in the banking sector.

An infinite-horizon, stochastic model of entry and exit with sunk costs and imperfect competition is constructed. Simple examples provide insights into: (1) the relationship between sunk costs and industry concentration, (2) entry when current profits are negative, and (3) the relationship...