Competition and Product Innovation of Intermediaries in a Differentiated Duopoly

Sonja Brangewitz () and Jochen Manegold ()
Additional contact information
Sonja Brangewitz: University of Paderborn
Jochen Manegold: University of Paderborn

No 90, Working Papers CIE from Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics

Abstract: On an intermediate goods market we allow for vertical and horizontal product differentiation and analyze the influence of simultaneous competition for resources and customers on the market outcome. Asymmetries between intermediaries cannot arise just from distinct product qualities, but also from different production technologies. The intermediaries face either price or quantity competition on the output market and a monopolistic input supplier on the input market. We find that there exist quality and productivity differences such that for quantity competition only one intermediary is willing to procure inputs from the input supplier, while for price competition both intermediaries are willing to purchase inputs. Considering product innovation for symmetric productivities we derive equilibrium conditions on the investment costs and compare price and quantity competition. It turns out that on the one hand there exist product qualities and degrees of horizontal product differentiation for complements such that asymmetric investment equilibria fail to exist. On the other hand we find that there also exist product qualities and degrees of horizontal product differentiation for substitutes such that existence can be guaranteed if the investment costs are chosen accordingly.

Keywords: Input Market; Product Quality; Quantity Competition; Price Competition; Product Innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D43 L13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2015-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ind and nep-ino
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://groups.uni-paderborn.de/wp-wiwi/RePEc/pdf/ciepap/WP90.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pdn:ciepap:90

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers CIE from Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by WP-WiWi-Info ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ) and ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).