This note provides an alternative construction to Blume (2003) of equilibria in the standard model of Bertrand competition with homogeneous products and different marginal costs that achieve the conventional outcome. In addition, I provide a means to select one of these equilibria.

The possibility of forward trading has been shown to restore social efficiency in Cournot oligopolies if marginal costs are constant. The paper analyzes the more general case that marginal costs are non-decreasing. I show that increasing marginal costs diminish the “strategic...

We examine a generic three-stage game for two players with alternating moves, where the first player can choose the level of adjustment cost to be paid in the last period to modify the action she announced in the first period. In the resulting continuum of commitment options, convexifying the...

I investigate how an incumbent firm deters entry by crowding the market, even when the incumbent can withdraw its stores in response to entry. In a two-location model, Judd (1985) shows such spatial entry deterrence is not credible. In contrast, I demonstrate spatial preemption can be credibly...

Bundled discounts by pairs of otherwise independent firms play an increasingly important role as a strategic tool in several industries. Given that prices of firms competing for the same consumers are strategic complements, one would expect their discounts levels also to be strategic...

We analyze the impact of passive partial ownership (PPO) on horizontal mergers. We show that antitrust authorities ignoring the effects of previous PPO acquisitions invite sneaky takeovers: a PPO is strategically used prior to a full takeover to get a merger approved which is in fact detrimental...

We analyze price competition between two brands. Buyers consist of switchers and two segments of customers with limited brand loyalty. We identify a unique symmetric mixed-strategy price equilibrium and find that competition is most relaxed when there exists some switchers.

This paper provides two characterizations of the retailer’s markup relative to the manufacturer’s markup in vertical relationships with homogeneous manufacturers and homogeneous retailers. We first show that retailer’s relative markup is equal to the ratio of the retail pass-through to the...