Monopoly VS Competition: Market Structure’s Impact on Product Innovation-with Endogenous Quality of New Product

This paper focuses on innovation for new product with exogenously determined horizontal difference from initial product which is provided either by a monopolist or by competitive firms. The innovator, no matter initially under monopoly or competition, will be unique producer of new product and need decide quality of new product which is correlated with investment for innovation. The paper through a model shows that for horizontally similar new product, competition is superior to monopoly to innovate. However, for typical horizontally differentiated product, a monopolist would choose higher quality and invest more than a competitive innovator does if innovation is complex, but brings about lower endogenous quality than the innovator initially under competition does if innovation is easy. Monopoly can support sales of new product with higher price of initial product, but also hamper product innovation to avoid erosion of initial profit. If it is presumed that complexity of innovation is always huge at the beginning, monopoly is more likely to generate innovation for horizontally different product while competition for similar product, respectively compared to each other.