In a world where firms are oligopolists, is it possible to create a customs union that raises the welfare of member countries without hurting non-members countries? We give sufficient conditions for an affirmative answer.

A model of location choice by Cournot oligopolists is presented, under the assumption that R&D spillovers depend on the distance between firms. We show that a variety of patters emerge. Agglomeration is optimal under certain assumptions. Geographical dispersion in a two- dimensional plane is...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of upstream cost asymmetries on the behavior of integrated firms. The model highlights the respective roles of strategic considerations and of cost considerations in the determination of an integrated firm's interaction with the non integrated...

This paper studies the optimal production subsidies for domestic firms that compete in an export market against each other as well as against foreign rivals. Assuming that all firms do not have identical cost curves, it shows that the optimal policy for the home government is to give the more...

We show that under Bertrand competition, firms may have an incentive to transfer real ressources to a joint venture operating in an unrelated market. The optimal transfers are typically asymmetric, in order to reduce the extent of rivalry in the oligopoly.

This paper analyzes the problem of altering the cost structure within an oligopoly, in the presence of costs of manipulation. Oligopolistic firms (which differ from each other in production costs) compete a la Cournot in the second stage, taking as given firm-specific taxes or input prices. In...

This paper analyzes a class of two-stage Cournot games where firms are collusive in the first stage, and shows that oligopolists may have a strong incentive to redistribute resources (such as capital, pollution permits, etc) within the industry as a means of coordinating their output decision.

We derive the characteristics of firm-specific trade policies when industries consist of heterogeneous firms, and show how the informational requirements for policy design are thereby expanded. A consideration of these informational requirements indicates that governments will confront...

Marshallian districts are locales that accomodate a large number of small firms producing similar goods to be exported and benefit from the accumulation of know-how associated with workers residing there. We study the making of such districts by assuming that the cost function of a firm is a...