We study a complete information preemption game in continuous time. A finite number of firms decide when to make an irreversible, observable investment. Upon investment, a firm receives flow profits, which decrease in the number of firms that have invested. The cost of investment declines over...

We study a complete information preemption game in continuous time. A finite number of firms decide when to make an irreversible, observable investment. Upon investment, a firm receives flow profits which decrease in the number of firms that have invested. The cost of investment declines over...

We show that in a preemption game of entry into a Cournot market, increasing the number of competitors beyond duopoly does not bring forward the time of first entry. We also show that all entries, except the first one, occur earlier than socially optimal.

In a preemption game, players decide when to take an irreversible action. Delaying the action exogenously increases payoffs, but there is an early mover advantage. Riordan (1992) shows that in a preemption game with two asymmetric players, players act in decreasing order of efficiency. This...