State aid to investment and R&D

The prohibition of state aid to investment and R&D in an integrated market such as the European Community is analysed in a Cournot oligopoly model where firms undertake investment or R&D to reduce their costs. Both strategic and non-strategic investment and R&D are considered. Governments in the Member States give subsidies for investment and R&D, which are financed by distortionary taxation so the opportunity cost of government revenue exceeds unity. Prohibiting state aid to investment will always increase aggregate welfare. Prohibiting state aid to R&D will always increase aggregate welfare if spillovers from R&D are small. If spillovers from R&D are moderate then there exists a range of values for opportunity cost where governments give state aid and where the prohibition of state aid will increase aggregate welfare. Prohibiting state aid to R&D will reduce aggregate welfare if spillovers from R&D are large.State aid prohibition, Cournot oligopoly model, R&D spillovers, distortionary taxation, Collie, R&D, research and development

Product Differentiation and the Gains from Trade under Bertrand Duopoly

In the literature on the welfare effects of free trade under imperfect competition, one important case seems to have been overlooked and that is the Bertrand duopoly model with differentiated products. Although many authors have analysed the welfare effects of free trade under Cournot duopoly, and demonstrated the possibility of losses from trade, there has been no thorough analysis of the welfare effects of free trade under Bertrand duopoly. This paper presents a thorough analysis of the welfare effects of free trade under Bertrand duopoly with differentiated products, and it is shown that there are always gains from trade.gains from trade, Bertrand Oligopoly

Maximum-Revenue Tariffs versus Free Trade

Welfare with the maximum‐revenue tariff is compared to free‐trade welfare under Cournot duopoly with differentiated products; under Bertrand duopoly with differentiated products; and under perfect competition in the case of a large country able to affect its terms of trade. Under Cournot duopoly and Bertrand duopoly, assuming linear demands and constant marginal costs, welfare with the maximum‐revenue tariff is always higher than free‐trade welfare. Under perfect competition, assuming linear demand and supply, welfare with the maximum‐revenue tariff will be higher than free‐trade welfare if the country has sufficient market power

Immiserizing growth and the Metzler Paradox in the Ricardian Model

Conditions for the occurrence of immiserizing growth and the Metzler paradox are analysed in the Ricardian model when consumers in the foreign country have Leontief preferences while consumers in the home country have Cobb-Douglas preferences. By using specific functional forms, the conditions for the occurrence of the two paradoxes are defined in terms of the exogenous parameters of the model rather than endogenous variables such as the elasticity of demand for exports in the conditions of Bhagwati (1958) and Metzler (1949a and b). It is shown that the simultaneous occurrence of both paradoxical results is possible for some parameter values

Multilateral trade liberalisation, foreign direct investment and the volume of world trade

A paradox in international trade is that multilateral trade liberalisation has resulted in increases in both the volume of world trade and the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI). This note presents a Cournot duopoly model with two regions, each consisting of two countries, and with an inter-regional transport cost. It is shown that multilateral trade liberalisation may lead firms to switch from exporting to undertaking export-platform FDI when the interregional transport cost is high. Also, when the inter-regional transport cost is high, the switch to FDI leads to an increase in the volume of world trade in this industry

The optimality of optimal punishments in Cournot supergames

The result of Colombo and Labrecciosa (2006) that optimal punishments are inferior to Nash-reversion trigger strategies with decreasing marginal costs is due to the output when a firm deviates from the punishment path being allowed to become negative

Gains from variety? Product differentiation and the possibility of losses from trade under Cournot oligopoly with free entry

In a free-entry Cournot oligopoly model with a quadratic utility function that yields differentiated products, it is shown that there are losses from trade when the trade cost is close to the prohibitive level. Although the total number of varieties increases, there is a reduction in consumer surplus. This occurs because trade leads to an increase in imported varieties where consumer surplus is low due to the high trade cost and a decrease in domestically-produced varieties where consumer surplus is high. This result is in contrast with results from the free-entry Cournot oligopoly models with homogeneous products of Brander and Krugman (1983) Venables (1985); the monopolistic competition models such as Krugman (1980) and Venables (1987), and heterogeneous firm models such as Melitz (2003) and Melitz and Ottaviano (2008)

CRRA utility and the sustainability of cooperation in infinitely-repeated games

In a symmetric infinitely-repeated game, where players have constant relative risk aversion (CRRA), or constant elasticity of intertemporal substitution, utility functions, it is shown that the critical discount factor required to sustain full cooperation is decreasing in the coefficient of relative risk aversion (increasing in the elasticity of intertemporal substitution). An application to cooperation in international environmental agreements (IEA) is presented and it is shown that the limit of the critical discount factor as the number of countries goes to infinity is equal to one (zero) if the coefficient of intertemporal inequality aversion is less (greater) than one