Price and Variety in the Spokes Model
Abstract
The spokes model of nonlocalised spatial competition provides a new analytical tool for differentiated oligopoly and a representation of spatial monopolistic competition. An increase in the number of firms leads to lower equilibrium prices when consumers have relatively high product valuations, but, surprisingly, to higher equilibrium prices for intermediate consumer valuations. New entry alters consumer and social welfare through price, market expansion, and matching effects. With free entry, the market may provide too many or too few varieties from a social welfare perspective, and the equilibrium price remains above marginal cost even when the number of firms is arbitrarily large. Copyright 2007 The Author(s). Journal compilation Royal Economic Society 2007.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Royal Economic Society in its journal The Economic Journal.
Volume (Year): 117 (2007)
Issue (Month): 522 (07)
Pages: 897-921
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.res.org.uk/
More information through EDIRC
Order Information:
Web: http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/asp/journal.asp?ref=0013-0133
Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Michael H. Riordan & Yongmin Chen, 2005. "Price and Variety in the Spokes Model," Discussion Papers 0405-20, Columbia University, Department of Economics.
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Perloff, Jeffrey M & Salop, Steven, 1984.
"Equilibrium with product differentiation,"
Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series
qt4cq0m6s3, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
- Perloff, Jeffrey M & Salop, Steven C, 1985. "Equilibrium with Product Differentiation," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(1), pages 107-20, January.
- Wolinsky, Asher, 1986. "True Monopolistic Competition as a Result of Imperfect Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 101(3), pages 493-511, August.
- Curtis Eaton, B. & Lipsey, Richard G., 1989. "Product differentiation," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 723-768 Elsevier.
- Yongmin Chen & Michael H. Riordan, 2003. "Vertical Integration, Exclusive Dealing, and Ex Post Cartelization," Discussion Papers 0203-13, Columbia University, Department of Economics.
- Sattinger, Michael, 1984. "Value of an Additional Firm in Monopolistic Competition," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 321-32, April.
- Yongmin Chen & Michael H. Riordan, 2008. "Price-increasing competition," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(4), pages 1042-1058.
- Rosenthal, Robert W, 1980. "A Model in Which an Increase in the Number of Sellers Leads to a Higher Price," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(6), pages 1575-79, September.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecj:econjl:v:117:y:2007:i:522:p:897-921For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing) or (Christopher F. Baum).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

