A synthesis of location models

Abstract

This article considers a model of spatial competition where firms and consumers are located in a semicircular space rather than in the whole circle (Salop's model) or the linear city (Hotelling's model), under the assumptions of both, convex and concave, transportation costs. The paper tries to generalize the results of the two previous models. We find that for concave transportation costs the existence of a price equilibrium is warranted for every firms' location when the length of the semicircular space is greater than 3/4. For the convex case, perfect equilibrium is only obtained when the size of the market segment is equivalent to Hotelling's linear model.