IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v52y1985i1p85-98..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Existence of Cournot Equilibrium

Author

Listed:
  • William Novshek

Abstract

This paper examines the existence of n-firm Cournot equilibrium in a market for a single homogeneous commodity. It proves that if each firm's marginal revenue declines as the aggregate output of other firms increases (which is implied by concave inverse demand) then a Cournot equilibrium exists, without assuming that firms have nondecreasing marginal cost or identical technologies. Also, if the marginal revenue condition fails at a "potential optimal output", there is a set of firms such that no Cournot equilibrium exists. The paper also contains an example of nonexistence with two nonidentical firms, each with constant returns to scale production.

Suggested Citation

  • William Novshek, 1985. "On the Existence of Cournot Equilibrium," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(1), pages 85-98.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:52:y:1985:i:1:p:85-98.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/2297471
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:52:y:1985:i:1:p:85-98.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.