In this paper we provide an integrative treatment of the welfare effects of trade and industrial policy under oligopoly, and characterize qualitatively the form that optimal intervention takes under a variety of assumptions about the number of firms, their conjectures about the response of their rivals to their actions, the substitutability of their productsand the markets in which they are sold. We find that when no domestic consumption occurs optimal policy under duopoly with a single home firm depends on the difference between firms' actual responses to their rivals and the response that their rivals' conjecture. If conjectures are consistent ,free trade is optimal. A tax or subsidy is indicated depending on the sign of the difference between the conjectured and the actual reponse.With more than one home firm but still no domestic consumption, an export tax is indicated if conjectures are consistent. Production subsidies and export tax-cum-subsidies can raise national welfare in the presence of domestic consumption, because these policies can mitigate the extent of the consumption distortion implicit in the deviation of price from marginal cost.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. 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.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
1236.
Length: Date of creation: Jun 1986 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1236
Note: ITI IFM Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
References listed on IDEAS Please 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.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please 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.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.