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Coarse Thinking and Collusion in Bertrand Duopoly with Increasing Marginal Costs

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  • Siddiqi, Hammad

Abstract

Mullainathan, Schwartzstein, & Shleifer [Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2008] put forward a model of coarse thinking. The essential idea behind coarse thinking is that agents put situations into categories and then apply the same model of inference to all situations in a given category. We extend the argument to strategies in a game-theoretic setting and propose the following: Agents split the choice-space into categories in comparison with salient choices and then choose each option in a given category with equal probability. We provide an alternative explanation for the puzzling results obtained in a Bertrand competition experiment as reported in Abbink & Brandts [Games and Economic Behavior, 63, 2008]

Suggested Citation

  • Siddiqi, Hammad, 2009. "Coarse Thinking and Collusion in Bertrand Duopoly with Increasing Marginal Costs," MPRA Paper 13516, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:13516
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sendhil Mullainathan & Joshua Schwartzstein & Andrei Shleifer, 2008. "Coarse Thinking and Persuasion," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 577-619.
    2. Abbink, Klaus & Brandts, Jordi, 2008. "24. Pricing in Bertrand competition with increasing marginal costs," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-31, May.
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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

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