This paper analyses collusion by innovative firms and the role of patents in a continuous-time real options framework. A patent-investment race model is formulated in which innovative firms bargain and reach collusive agreements. It is shown that, while collusion always delays innovation, it...

A Nash equilibrium can also be seen as a Cournot-Nash equilibrium, though this is debated because Cournot provided a specific application, not a general formulation. In my view, another of Nash's fundamental contributions stands out when contrasting him to Cournot. Cournot treated economic...

A well established belief both in the game-theoretic IO and in policy debates is that market concentration facilitates collusion. We show that this piece of conventional wisdom relies upon the assumption of profit-seeking behaviour, for it may be reversed when firms pursue other plausible goals....

Results are reported of a laboratory experiment aimed at examining whether strategic substitutability and strategic complementarity have an impact on the tendency to cooperate in two-player dominance-solvable games with a Pareto-inefficient Nash equilibrium. We find that there is significantly...

We will call a game a reachable (pure strategy) equilibria game if starting from any strategy by any player, by a sequence of best-response moves we are able to reach a (pure strategy) equilibrium. We give a characterization of all finite strategy space duopolies with reachable equilibria. We...

This paper presents a new cooperative equilibrium for strategic form games, denoted Conjectural Cooperative Equilibrium (CCE). This concept is based on the expectation that joint deviations from any strategy profile are followed by an optimal and noncooperative reaction of non deviators. We show...

We consider a multi-stage game where firms first choose product quality and then compete for sales in the product market. We show how the equilibrium qualities are influenced by timing (sequential or simultaneous) of quality choices depends on the type of competition (Bertrand or Cournot) in the...

We compare the number of active firms, i.e. the number of firms producing a positive quantity, in equilibrium across four different models of oligopoly. The two main models are Cournot where quantity is the strategic variable and prices are determined by the market, and Bertrand where price is...