The present paper reconsiders the inside innovators’ licensing problem under incomplete information. Employing an optimal mechanism design approach, we show that, contrary to what is claimed in the literature, the optimal mechanism may prescribe fixed fees, royalty rates lower than the cost...

It is well known that the presence of imperfect monitoring limits the possibility of making efficient agreements. When firms interact repeatedly in multiple markets, however, we show that noisy observations may improve the possibility of collusion. When observation is noisy in at least one...

We study a duopoly where the two price setting firms have symmetric information. The firms produce substitute goods with a state dependent common value. The information that is available to both firms about the unknown state of nature is also available to the consumers, who also have access to...

We construct a framework for modeling dynamic Cournot oligopoly. We consider models where utility maximizing consumers give rise to demand functions that depend on current and prior period prices. Future demand depends on the current price and consumers and firms must take this into account when...

The seminal work of Fudenberg and Tirole [Preemption and Rent Equalization in the Adoption of New Technology, Rev. Econ. Stud., 1985] on how preemption erodes the value of an option to wait raises general questions about the relation between models in discrete and continuous time and thus about...

Do firms under relative payoff s maximizing (RPM) behavior always choose a strategy profile that results in tougher competition compared to firms under absolute payoffs maximizing (APM) behavior? In this paper we will address this issue through a simple model of symmetric oligopoly where firms...

This paper provides a general characterization of subgame perfect equilibria for strategic timing problems, where two firms have the (real) option to make an irreversible investment. Profit streams are uncertain and depend on the market structure. The analysis is based directly on the inherent...

This paper analyzes competition in a two-period differentiated-products duopoly in the presence of both switching costs and network effects. We show that they have opposite implications on the demand side, specially in the first period. While the former reduces demand elasticities, the latter...