Information Advantage in Cournot Oligopoly

Consider an oligopolistic industry where firms have access to the same technology but are asymmetrically informed about the environment. Even though it is commonplace to think that in this context superior information leads to higher profits, we find that under Cournot competition this is not generally the case: It holds when firms' technology exhibits constant returns to scale, but it does not necessarily hold otherwise.Publicad

Information advantage in cournot oligopoly.

We model an oligopolistic industry where a number of firms that are asymmetrically informed about the environment compete via quantities, and we study how the information available to a firm affects its equilibrium profits. Indeed we find that if all firms have access to the same constant returns to scale technology, in any Bayesian equilibrium the information advantage of a firm is rewarded.Cournot oligopoly; Asymmetric information; Information advantage; Bayesian equilibrium; correlated equilibrium;

Information advantage in cournot oligopoly

We model an oligopolistic industry where a number of firms that are asymmetrically informed about the environment compete via quantities, and we study how the information available to a firm affects its equilibrium profits. Indeed we find that if all firms have access to the same constant returns to scale technology, in any Bayesian equilibrium the information advantage of a firm is rewarded

Information Advantage in Cournot Oligopoly with Separable Information, or Nondifferentiable

Einy et al (2002) showed that information advantage of a firm is rewarded in any equilibrium of an incomplete information Cournot oligopoly, provided the inverse demand function is differentiable and monotonically decreasing, and costs are affine. We extend this result in two directions. We show first that a firm receives not less than its rival even if that firm's information advantage is only regarding payoff-relevant data, and not necessarily payoff-irrelevant "sunspots". We then show that there is at least one equilibrium which rewards firm's information advantage even with non-differentiable, but concave, inverse demand function. Under certain conditions, these results hold even with always non-negative inverse demand functions.Oligopoly, Incomplete Information, Information advantage, Bayesian Cournot, Equilibrium, Sunspots, Non-differentiability, Inverse demand

Imitators and Optimizers in Cournot Oligopoly

We analyze a symmetric n-firm Cournot oligopoly with a heterogeneous population of optimizers and imitators. Imitators mimic the output decision of the most successful firms of the previous round a l`a Vega-Redondo (1997). Optimizers play a myopic best response to the opponents’ previous output. Firms are allowed to make mistakes and deviate from the decision rules with a small probability. Applying stochastic stability analysis, we find that the long run distribution converges to a recurrent set of states in which imitators are better off than are optimizers. This finding appears to be robust even when optimizers are more sophisticated. It suggests that imitators drive optimizers out of the market contradicting a fundamental conjecture by Friedman (1953)

Strategic delegation in a sequential model with multiple stages

We analyze strategic delegation in a Stackelberg model with an arbitrary number, n, of firms. We show that the n-1 last movers delegate their production decisions to managers whereas the first mover does not. Equilibrium incentive rates are increasing in the order with which managers select quantities. Letting u_i^* denote the equilibrium payoff of the firm whose manager moves in the i-th place, we show that u_n^*>u_{n-1}^*>...>u_2^*>u_1^*. We also compare the delegation outcome of our game with that of a Cournot oligopoly and show that the late (early) moving firms choose higher (lower) incentive rates than the Cournot firms.Comment: To appear in International Game Theory Review (IGTR), Vol. 13, No. 3 (2011) 1-1

On the existence of Bayesian Cournot equilibrium

We show that even in very simple oligopolies with differential information a (Bayesian) Cournot equilibrium in pure strategies may not exist, or be unique. However, we find sufficient conditions for existence, and for uniqueness, of Cournot equilibrium in a certain class of industries. More general results arise when negative prices are allowed

Tax Compliance and Firms' Strategic Interdependence

We focus on a relatively neglected area of the tax-compliance literature in economics, the behaviour of firms. We examine the impact of alternative audit rules on receipts from a tax on profits in the context of strategic interdependence of firms. In the market firms may compete in terms of either output or price. The enforcement policy can have an effect on firms' behaviour in two dimensions - their market decisions as well as their compliance behaviour. An appropriate design of the enforcement policy can thus have a "double dividend" by manipulating firms in both dimensions.tax compliance, evasion, oligopoly

Imitators and Optimizers in Cournot Oligopoly

We analyze a symmetric n-firm Cournot oligopoly with a heterogeneous population of optimizers and imitators. Imitators mimic the output decision of the most successful firms of the previous round a l`a Vega-Redondo (1997). Optimizers play a myopic best response to the opponents’ previous output. Firms are allowed to make mistakes and deviate from the decision rules with a small probability. Applying stochastic stability analysis, we find that the long run distribution converges to a recurrent set of states in which imitators are better off than are optimizers. This finding appears to be robust even when optimizers are more sophisticated. It suggests that imitators drive optimizers out of the market contradicting a fundamental conjecture by Friedman (1953).profit maximization hypothesis; bounded rationality; learning; Stackelberg