IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1236.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Trade and Industrial Policy Under Oligopoly

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Eaton
  • Gene M. Grossman

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan Eaton & Gene M. Grossman, 1983. "Optimal Trade and Industrial Policy Under Oligopoly," NBER Working Papers 1236, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1236
    Note: ITI IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1236.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barbara J. Spencer & James A. Brander, 1983. "International R & D Rivalry and Industrial Strategy," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 50(4), pages 707-722.
    2. Seade, Jesus K, 1980. "On the Effects of Entry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(2), pages 479-489, March.
    3. Barbara J. Spencer & James A. Brander, 1982. "Tariff Protection and Imperfect Competition," Working Papers 517, Queen's University, Department of Economics.
    4. Morton I. Kamien & Nancy L. Schwartz, 1983. "Conjectural Variations," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 16(2), pages 191-211, May.
    5. Dixit, Avinash, 1984. "International Trade Policy for Oligopolistic Industries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 94(376a), pages 1-16, Supplemen.
    6. Martin K. Perry, 1982. "Oligopoly and Consistent Conjectural Variations," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(1), pages 197-205, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:1236. 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: () or (Joanne Lustig). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.