Using the concept of market-distribution functions, we derive general optimality conditions for discriminatory divisible-good auctions, which are also applicable to Bertrand games and non-linear pricing. We introduce the concept of offer distribution function to analyze randomized offer curves,...

We present a non-technical account of ambiguity in strategic games and show how it may be applied to economics and social sciences. Optimistic and pessimistic responses to ambiguity are formally modelled. We show that pessimism has the effect of increasing (decreasing) equilibrium prices under...

Before 2004 South Africa was the dominant steam coal exporter to the European market. However a new market situation with rising global demand and prices makes room for a new entrant: Russia. The hypothesis investigated in this paper is that the three incumbent dominant firms located in South...

Water markets with market power are analysed as multi-market Cournot competition in which the river structure constrains access to local markets and limited resources impose capacity constraints. Conditions for uniqueness are identified. Lerner indices are larger under binding resource...

Biconcavity is a simple condition on inverse demand that corresponds to the ordinary concept of concavity after simultaneous parameterized transformations of price and quantity. The notion is employed here in the framework of the homogeneous-good Cournot model with potentially heterogeneous...

We analyze a symmetric n-firm Cournot oligopoly with a heterogeneous population of optimizers and imitators. Imitators mimic the output decision of the most successful firms of the previous round à la Vega-Redondo (1997). Optimizers play a myopic best response to the opponents' previous output....

We present a non-technical account of ambiguity in strategic games and show how it may be applied to economics and social sciences. Optimistic and pessimistic responses to ambiguity are formally modelled. We show that pessimism has the effect of increasing (decreasing) equilibrium prices under...

In this note we study a very simple trial & error learning process in the context of a Cournot oligopoly. Without any knowledge of the payoff functions players increase, respectively decrease, their quantity by one unit as long as this leads to higher profits. We show that despite the absence of...

It is shown that a win-stay, lose-hift behavior rule with endogenous aspiration levels yields cooperation in a certain class of games. The aspiration level in each round equals the current population average. The class of games includes the prisoner's dilemma and Cournot oligopoly and thus...

In this paper we investigate how the competitiveness of Cournot markets varies with the number of firms in an industry. We review previous Cournot experiments in the literature. Additionally, we conduct a new series of experiments studying oligopolies with two, three, four, and five firms in a...