We show that for many classes of symmetric two-player games, the simple decision rule "imitate-the-best" can hardly be beaten by any other decision rule. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for imitation to be unbeatable and show that it can only be beaten by much in games that are of...

The hypothesis that vertically integrated firms have an incentive to foreclose the input market because foreclosure raises its downstream rivals' costs is the subject of much controversy in the theoretical industrial organization literature. A powerful argument against this hypothesis is that,...

This study investigates the impact of pre-play communication on the outcomes in Cournot duopoly and triopoly experiments, using both students and managers as subjects. Communication is implemented by two different devices, a 'standardized-communication' and a free-communication device. We find...

We show that concealing cost information is a dominant strategy in heterogeneous Bertrand oligopolies. This result enables us to endogenize the number of firms in a market in terms of market size, entry costs, and unit cost uncertainty.

Unternehmen müssen nicht immer Kollusionsabsichten verfolgen, wenn sie untereinander Informationen austauschen. Dieser Beitrag zeigt, daß bei Nachfrageunsicherheit auch strikt kompetitive Konkurrenten private Informationen bezüglich ihrer Nachfragebedingungen preisgeben. Dies läßt sich in...

This paper further develops the standard modelling of information exchange between firms in the presence of demand uncertainty which applies to firms in new industries and insecure regions or markets. We replace the normal distribution of the random variables, commonly used because of its...

This paper demonstrates that the Bertrand paradox does not hold if cost functions are strictly convex. Instead, multiple equilibria exist which can be Pareto-ranked. The paper shows that the Pareto-dominant equilibrium may imply profus higher than in Cournot competition or may even sustain...

The literature on deregulated electricity markets generally assumes available capacities to be given. In contrast, this paper studies a model where firms precommit to capacity levels before competing in a uniform price auction. The analysis sheds light on recent empirical findings that firms use...

We show that for many classes of symmetric two-player games, the simple decision rule imitate-the-best can hardly be beaten by any other decision rule. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for imitation to be unbeatable and show that it can only be beaten by much in games that are of...

Bertrand competition under decreasing returns involves a wide interval of pure strategy equilibrium prices. We first present results of experiments in which two, three and four identical firms repeatedly interact in this environment. Less collusion with more firms leads to lower average prices....