We propose a general model of monopolistic competition which encompasses existing models while being flexible enough to take into account new demand and competition features. Even though preferences need not be additive and/or homothetic, the market outcome is still driven by the sole variable...

Our novel approach to modeling monopolistic competition with heterogeneous consumers involves a space of characteristics of a differentiated good (consumers' ideal points), alike Hotelling (1929). Firms have heterogeneous costs à la Melitz (2003). In addition to price setting, each firm also...

We show that a market involving a handful of large-scale firms and a myriad of small-scale firms may give rise to different types of market structure, ranging from monopoly or oligopoly to monopolistic competition through new types of market structure. In particular, we find conditions under...

We develop a dynamic model of monopolistic competition which sheds light on how the interplay between the degree of product differentiation and intertemporal elasticity of substitution affects the steady-state equilibrium. Consumers love variety and split their labor endowment between wage...

We characterize three classes of demand systems, all of which are defined nonparametrically: homothetic demand systems with a single aggregator (HSA), those with direct implicit additivity (HDIA), and those with indirect implicit additivity (HIIA). For any number of goods, all the cross-price...

We provide a selective survey of what has been accomplished under the heading of monopolistic competition in industrial organization and other economic fields. Among other things, we argue that monopolistic competition is a market structure in its own right, which encompasses a much broader...

We develop a simple partial-equilibrium model of endogenous city structure formation. No production externalities are at work, the only two forces shaping the spatial configurations of the city being love for variety (on the consumer side) and seeking for a better access to the market (on the...

We show that a wide class of demand systems for differentiated products, such as those generated by additive preferences, indirectly additive preferences, and Kimball-like homothetic preferences, can be given a multinomial logit foundation provided that the conditional indirect utility is...

We develop a two-sector model of monopolistic competition with a differentiated intermediate good and variable elasticity of technological substitution. This setting proves to be well-suited to studying the nature and origins of external increasing returns. We disentangle two sources of scale...

We develop a general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with a traded and a non-traded sector. Using a broad class of homothetic preferences—that generate variable markups, display a simple behavior of their elasticity of substitution, and nest the ces as a limiting case—we show...