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Oligopolistic competition as a common agency game

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  • d'Aspremont, Claude
  • Dos Santos Ferreira, Rodolphe

Abstract

Oligopolistic competition is analyzed in a complete information multi-principal common agency framework, where principals are firms supplying differentiated goods and the agent is a representative consumer. We first propose a canonical formulation of common agency games, and a parameterization of the set of equilibria based on the Lagrange multipliers associated with the participation and the incentive compatibility constraints of each principal. This is used to characterize the set of equilibria in the intrinsic and non-intrinsic games. The former includes the latter, as well as the standard price and quantity equilibrium outcomes. It may also include the collusive solution.

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  • d'Aspremont, Claude & Dos Santos Ferreira, Rodolphe, 2010. "Oligopolistic competition as a common agency game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 21-33, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:70:y:2010:i:1:p:21-33
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    8. Martimort David & Stole Lars, 2003. "Contractual Externalities and Common Agency Equilibria," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-40, July.
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    1. Claude d’Aspremont & Rodolphe Dos Santos Ferreira, 2016. "Oligopolistic vs. monopolistic competition: Do intersectoral effects matter?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 62(1), pages 299-324, June.
    2. d’Aspremont, Claude & Dos Santos Ferreira, Rodolphe, 2017. "The Dixit–Stiglitz economy with a ‘small group’ of firms: A simple and robust equilibrium markup formula," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(4), pages 729-739.
    3. d'Aspremont, Claude & Dos Santos Ferreira, Rodolphe, 2009. "Price-quantity competition with varying toughness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 62-82, January.
    4. Han, Seungjin, 2012. "On take it or leave it offers in common agency," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 777-781.
    5. Saul DESIDERIO & Davide DOTTORI, 2007. "A note on competitive toughness: why it should be identified neither with product substitutability, nor (inversely) with concentration. Toward a unified theory of oligopoly," Working Papers 301, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    6. Andrea Attar & Eloisa Campioni & Gwenael Piaser, 2011. "Information Revelation in Competing Mechanism Games," CEIS Research Paper 205, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 04 Jul 2011.
    7. Ulrich Horst & Santiago Moreno-Bromberg, 2010. "Efficiency and Equilibria in Games of Optimal Derivative Design," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2010-035, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    8. Attar, Andrea & Campioni, Eloisa & Piaser, Gwenaël, 2013. "Two-sided communication in competing mechanism games," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 62-70.

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