IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/gamebe/v66y2009i1p1-26.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Price and capacity competition

Author

Listed:
  • Acemoglu, Daron
  • Bimpikis, Kostas
  • Ozdaglar, Asuman

Abstract

We study the efficiency of oligopoly equilibria in a model where firms compete over capacities and prices. Our model economy corresponds to a two-stage game. First, firms choose their capacity levels. Second, after the capacity levels are observed, they set prices. Given the capacities and prices, consumers allocate their demands across the firms. We establish the existence of pure strategy oligopoly equilibria and characterize the set of equilibria. We then investigate the efficiency properties of these equilibria, where "efficiency" is defined as the ratio of surplus in equilibrium relative to the first best. We show that efficiency in the worst oligopoly equilibria can be arbitrarily low. However, if the best oligopoly equilibrium is selected (among multiple equilibria), the worst-case efficiency loss is with N firms, and this bound is tight. We also suggest a simple way of implementing the best oligopoly equilibrium.

Suggested Citation

  • Acemoglu, Daron & Bimpikis, Kostas & Ozdaglar, Asuman, 2009. "Price and capacity competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 1-26, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:66:y:2009:i:1:p:1-26
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899-8256(08)00121-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    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:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Natalia Fabra & Nils‐Henrik Fehr & David Harbord, 2006. "Designing electricity auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(1), pages 23-46, March.
    2. Daron Acemoglu & Asuman Ozdaglar, 2007. "Competition and Efficiency in Congested Markets," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 32(1), pages 1-31, February.
    3. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1991. "Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061414, January.
    4. Richard E. Levitan & Martin Shubik, 1970. "Duopoly with Price and Quantity as Strategic Variables," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 289, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    5. Martin J. Osborne & Ariel Rubinstein, 1994. "A Course in Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262650401, January.
    6. Partha Dasgupta & Eric Maskin, 1986. "The Existence of Equilibrium in Discontinuous Economic Games, I: Theory," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 53(1), pages 1-26.
    7. David M. Kreps & Jose A. Scheinkman, 1983. "Quantity Precommitment and Bertrand Competition Yield Cournot Outcomes," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 326-337, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Liu, Tian-Liang & Chen, Jian & Huang, Hai-Jun, 2011. "Existence and efficiency of oligopoly equilibrium under toll and capacity competition," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 908-919.
    2. Felipe Balmaceda & Santiago Balseiro & Jose Correa & Nicolas Stier-Moses, 2014. "Bounds on the Welfare Loss of Moral Hazard with Limited Liability," Working Papers 55, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad Diego Portales.
    3. José R. Correa & Nicolás Figueroa & Nicolás E. Stier-Moses, 2008. "Pricing with markups in industries with increasing marginal costs," Documentos de Trabajo 256, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    4. de Frutos, María-Ángeles & Fabra, Natalia, 2011. "Endogenous capacities and price competition: The role of demand uncertainty," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 399-411, July.
    5. Nasri, Mostafa & Bastin, Fabian & Marcotte, Patrice, 2015. "Quantifying the social welfare loss in moral hazard models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 245(1), pages 226-235.
    6. van den Berg, Vincent A.C., 2013. "Serial private infrastructures," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 186-202.
    7. Robert Somogyi, 2013. "Bertrand-Edgeworth competition with substantial product differentiation," IEHAS Discussion Papers 1332, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
    8. Christiaan Behrens & Mark Lijesen, 2012. "Capacity Choice under Uncertainty with Product Differentiation," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 12-113/VIII, Tinbergen Institute, revised 20 Feb 2014.
    9. van den Berg, Vincent A.C. & Verhoef, Erik T., 2012. "Is the travel time of private roads too short, too long, or just right?," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 971-983.
    10. Balmaceda, Felipe & Balseiro, Santiago R. & Correa, José R. & Stier-Moses, Nicolás E., 2016. "Bounds on the welfare loss from moral hazard with limited liability," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 137-155.
    11. van den Berg, Vincent A.C., 2012. "Auctions for private congestible infrastructures," MPRA Paper 40103, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Capacity Competition Efficiency loss Industry structure Investment oligopoly;

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

    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:eee:gamebe:v:66:y:2009:i:1:p:1-26. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622836 .

    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 CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service 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.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.