Equilibrium Innovation Ecosystems: The Dark Side of Collaborating with Complementors
Abstract
The recent years have exhibited a burst in the amount of collaborative activities among firms selling complementary products. This paper aims at providing a rationale for such a large extent of collaboration ties among complementors. To this end, we analyze a game in which the two producers of a certain component have the possibility to form pairwise collaboration ties with each of the two producers of a complementary component. Once ties are formed, each of the four firms decides how much to invest in improving the quality of the match with each possible complementor, under the assumption that a firm with a collaboration link with a complementor puts some weight on the complementor's profit when making investment decisions. Once investment choices have taken place, all firms choose prices for their respective components in a noncooperative manner. In equilibrium, firms end up forming as many collaboration ties as it is possible, although they would all prefer a scenario where collaboration were forbidden. In addition, a social planner would also prefer such a scenario to the one arising in equilibrium. We show that the result that collaboration is inefficient for firms and society does not depend on whether collaboration ties are formed in an exclusive manner: in fact, exclusivity would only worsen the situation.Download Info
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Paper provided by NET Institute in its series Working Papers with number 11-31.Length: 31 pages
Date of creation: Oct 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:net:wpaper:1131
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Web page: http://www.NETinst.org/
Related research
Keywords: Systems Competition; Complementary Products; Interoperability; Collaboration Link; Co-opetition; Exclusivity.;Other versions of this item:
- A. Mantovani & F. Ruiz-Aliseda, 2012. "Equilibrium Innovation Ecosystems: The Dark Side of Collaborating with Complementors," Working Papers wp825, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
- L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
- M21 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Business Economics - - - Business Economics
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2011-11-07 (All new papers)
- NEP-COM-2011-11-07 (Industrial Competition)
- NEP-INO-2011-11-07 (Innovation)
References
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Emilie Dargaud & Carlo Reggiani, 2012.
"On the Price Effects of Horizontal Mergers: A Theoretical Interpretation,"
The School of Economics Discussion Paper Series
1201, Economics, The University of Manchester.
- Emilie Dargaud & Carlo Reggiani, 2012. "On the Price Effects of Horizontal Mergers : A Theoretical Interpretation," Working Papers 1222, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique (GATE), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Université Lyon 2, Ecole Normale Supérieure.
- Emilie Dargaud & Carlo Reggiani, 2012. "On the Price Effects of Horizontal Mergers : A Theoretical Interpretation," Working Papers halshs-00717467, HAL.
- Emilie Dargaud & Carlo Reggiani, . "Horizontal Mergers in the Spokes Model," Discussion Papers 09/12, Department of Economics, University of York.
- Carlo Reggiani, .
"Optimal Differentiation and Spatial Competition: The Spokes Model with Product Delivery,"
Discussion Papers
09/13, Department of Economics, University of York.
- Carlo Reggiani, 2012. "Spatial price discrimination in the spokes model," The School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 1207, Economics, The University of Manchester.
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