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....

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...

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...

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...

In this paper we apply the Complete Analysis of Differentiable Games (introduced by D. Carfì in [3], [6], [8] and [9]) and al-ready employed by himself and others in [4], [5], [7]) to the classic Bertrand Duopoly (1883), classic oligopolistic market in which there are two enterprises producing...

This paper deals with duopoly models with vertical product differentiation. These are two-stage games. In the first stage, the quality game, the two firms choose their quality. In the second stage, the price game, they choose their prices. When the market is covered, the properties of this game...

A duopoly model is developed in which firms' strategic variables include brand quality, the number of distinct market segments to enter and price. Informative advertising is used to overcome consumer ignorance about brands. In contrast to many existing models in which firms engage in price...

In asymmetric dilemma games without side payments, players face involved cooperation and bargaining problems. The maximization of joint profits is implausible, players disagree on the collusive action, and the outcome is often inefficient. For the example of a Cournot duopoly with asymmetric...