The role of patents is threefold: first, they are important to state the property rights of an invention; second, they are necessary to secure financing for starting a new venture; third, they are fundamental to recoup R&D investments. The main difficulty in preventing unauthorized use of an...

In recent years economics agents and systems have become more and more interacting and juxtaposed, therefore the social sciences need to rely on the studies of physical sciences to analyze this complexity in the relationships. According to this point of view the authors rely on the geometrical...

This paper extends the traditional analysis of the output effect under monopoly (third-degree) price discrimination to a multimarket oligopoly. The author shows that under oligopoly price discrimination, differences in competitive pressure, measured by the number of firms, across markets are...

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...

This paper considers a general symmetric quantity-setting oligopoly where the "coefficient of cooperation" defined by Cyert and DeGroot (An Analysis of Cooperation and Learning in a Duopoly Context, 1973) is interpreted as the parameter indicating severity of competition. It is obtained that...

In stochastic and competitive environments, investors face an investment dilemma because the environments provide conflicting incentives. Empirical research reports various behaviors exhibited by investors, including voluntary concurrent investments, which are called bandwagon investments....

The paper studies indirect network effects in a market composed by two incompatible intermediaries that choose price (short-term issue) in addition to location (long-term issue). The paper first shows that (i) when the network externality is sufficiently weak, only maximum differentiation...

Industries with mixed oligopoly are exceedingly popular all over the world, especially in developing countries, such as China. This paper highlights the innovation strategies of mixed duopoly with a (semi-) public firm and another private firm, and the effects of mixed oligopoly on innovation...

This paper analyses the endogenous formation of technology sharing coalitions with asymmetric firms. Coalition partners produce complementary technology advancements, although each firm determines its R&D investment level non-cooperatively and there is no co-operation in the product market. We...