In this paper we investigate how the competitiveness of Cournot markets varies with the number of firms in an industry. We review previous Cournot experiments in the literature. Additionally, we conduct a new series of experiments studying oligopolies with two, three, four, and five firms in a unified frame. With two firms we find some collusion. Three-firm oligopolies tend to produce outputs at the Nash level. Markets with four or five firms are never collusive and typically settle at or above the Cournot outcome. Some of those markets are actually quite competitive with outputs close to the Walrasian outcome.
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Paper provided by University of Bonn, Germany in its series Bonn Econ Discussion Papers with number
bgse12_2001.
Length: 14 Date of creation: Mar 2001 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:bon:bonedp:bgse12_2001
Contact details of provider: Postal: Bonn Graduate School of Economics, University of Bonn, Adenauerallee 24 - 26, 53113 Bonn, Germany Fax: +49 228 73 9221 Web page: http://www.bgse.uni-bonn.de/index.php?id=494
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Find related papers by JEL classification: L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
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