Competitors are welcome: why incumbents might embrace entrants?

In this article we show that the price and the profit of an incumbent firm may increase after a new firm enters its market. Our analysis suggests that a well-established firm after competition emerges on its market might benefit from excluding some consumers from the low-end segment and concentrate only on its loyal consumers

Strategic segmentation: when two monopolies are better than one

In this article we show that the price and the profit of an incumbent firm may increase after a new firm enters its market. Our analysis suggests that a well-established firm after competition emerges on its market might benefit from excluding some consumers from the low- end segment and concentrate only on its loyal consumers. We also find that strategic de-marketing can increase social welfare

When Market Competition Benefits Firms

A conventional wisdom in economics posits that more intense market competition, measured in almost any way, reduces firm profit. In this paper, we challenge this conventional wisdom in a simple Cournot model with strategic R&D investments wherein an efficient firm (dominant firm) competes against less efficient firms (fringe firms). We find that an increase in the number of fringe firms can stimulate R&D by the dominant firm, while it always reduces R&D by each of the fringe firms. More importantly, this force can be strong enough to compensate for the loss that arises from more intense market competition: the dominant firm's profit may indeed increase with the number of fringe firms, quite contrary to the conventional wisdom. An implication of this result is far-reaching, as it gives dominant firms to help, rather than harm, fringe competitors. We relate this implication to a practice know as open knowledge disclosure, especially Ford's strategy of disclosing its know-how publicly and extensively at the beginning of the 20th century.competition, oligopoly, R&D, heterogeneity, entry

Do Incumbents Improve Service Quality in Response to Entry? Evidence from Airlines’ On-Time Performance

We examine if and how incumbent firms respond to entry, and entry threats, using non-price modes of competition. Our analysis focuses on service quality within the airline industry. We find that incumbent on-time performance actually worsens in response to entry, and even entry threats, by Southwest Airlines. Given Southwest’s general superiority in on-time performance, this result is consistent with equilibria of theoretical models of quality and price competition, which generally predict differentiation along quality. We corroborate this intuition with further analysis, showing there is no notable response by incumbents when an airline with average on-time performance (Continental) threatens to enter or enters a route.

Profit raising entry in a vertical structure

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. In contrast to the usual belief, we show that entry in the final goods market increases profits of the incumbent final goods producers if there is free entry in the input market and the final goods are sufficiently differentiated. Thus, we extend Matsushima (2006)

The effects of entry in oligopolistic trade with bargained input prices

Firms which face the threat of import competition from foreign rivals are conventionally seen as favouring import protection. We show that this is not necessarily the case when domestic firms' in-put prices are determined endogenously. In a framework where the input price is determined through bargaining with an (upstream) input supplier, the relationship between a domestic (downstream) firm's profits and the number of foreign competitors depends on trade costs. If trade costs are sufficiently high, then an increase in the number of foreign entrants can raise the profits of a downstream firm in a home market characterised by Cournot competition. The intuition for this result is that increased product market competition through the entry of foreign firms is mirrored by profit-enhancing moderation of the bargained input price. We examine a number of tariff and non-tariff barriers to international trade and identify conditions under which import-competing firms will favour the removal of barriers to foreign competition

Profit-enhancing entries in mixed oligopolies

Mixed oligopolies are characterized by private and public enterprises. Entry into these markets was restrictive, but has now been relaxed by deregulations; as a result, private firms have entered mixed oligopolies. An increase in the number of private firms increases competition among private firms and reduces the profit of incumbent private firms, given the privatization policy remains unchanged. However, an increase in the number of private firms may in turn affect privatization policy, and thus, indirectly affect private firms' profits. Therefore, the overall effect on private firms' profit is ambiguous. In this study, we thus investigate how the number of private firms affects the profit of each private firm in mixed oligopolies. For this end, we use a linear-quadratic production cost function, which covers two popular model formulations in the mixed oligopoly literature. We show that, if the degree of privatization is exogenous, the profit of each private firm is decreasing in the number of private firms. However, if the degree of privatization is endogenous, the relationship between the number of private firms and profit takes an inverted-U shape under a plausible range of cost parameters. Our results imply that there can exist multiple equilibria in free-entry markets with different degrees of privatization