It is a commonplace to assume that competition within an industry reduces firms’ profit margins and production inefficiency and increases the effort and resources firms spend on innovations. Although theoretically there are good reasons to believe that competition will increase the...

A two period R&D symmetric Cournot duopoly game with linear demand and costs is analysed under linear (or more general) returns to scale in process R&D. Subgame-perfect equilibrium may call for one firm to fully innovate while the other firm remains just as before. The outcome is a polar duopoly...

We investigate whether increased transparency about prices may increase the countervailing power exercised by buyers of an intermediate good and whether this will lead to a decrease of intermediate goods prices. We show that, even in a non-cooperative, one-shot model, the most likely outcome of...

Multi-period multi-product regulatory schemes for electricity distributors are presented, based on cost information from a productivity analysis model and an agency theoretical decision model. The proposed schemes are operational and demonstrate considerable advantages compared to the popular...

We consider a two-period duopoly characterized by a one-way spillover structure in process R&D and a very broad specification of product market competition. We show that a priori identical firms always engage in different levels of R&D, at equilibrium, thus giving rise to an innovator/imitator...

We briefly review the rationale behind technological alliances and provide a snapshot of their role in global competition, especially insofar as it is based around intellectual capital. They nicely illustrate the increased importance of horizontal agreements and thus establish the relevance of...

We define an evolutionary process of “economic Darwinism” for playing-the-field, symmetric games. The process captures two forces. One is “economic selection”: if current behavior leads to payoff differences, behavior yielding lowest payoff has strictly positive probability of being...

This paper explores an algorithm which serves as a market auctioneer under the following constraints: [i] traders arrive randomly and each sales/purchase order should be executed at the currently posted price (sequential service), [ii] the auctioneer need not know the exact fundamental value of...

Different market settings are considered in a free trade environment, where firms can choose technology, quality, and price or quantity. The shape of competition in prices requires the intervention of governments, via a common antidumping policy to make firms converge on the simultaneous...

We relate the sources of innovation market failure to the dominant mode of sectoral innovation and outline mechanisms for public support of innovation that target specific sources of innovation market failure.