Does information about competitors' actions increase or decrease competition in experimental oligopoly markets?

Steffen Huck, Hans-Theo Normann () and Jörg Oechssler

Industrial Organization from EconWPA

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of information about rivals' actions on the competitiveness of experimental oligopoly markets. We compare two treatments: in one, firms are informed about their rivals' actions and profits. In the other, firms are only given some aggregate information about their rivals' actions (aggregate quantities, average price). We find that in markets where goods are strategic substitutes (Cournot) the first, full information treatment leads to a significantly higher degree of competition. This is in contrast to conventional wisdom in IO. However, in markets with strategic complements (Bertrand), we find no significant difference between the two treatments.

JEL-codes: L13 C92 C72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998-03-25
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://129.3.20.41/eps/io/papers/9803/9803004.pdf (application/pdf)
http://129.3.20.41/eps/io/papers/9803/9803004.ps.gz (application/postscript)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does information about competitors' actions increase or decrease competition in experimental oligopoly markets? (2000)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpio:9803004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Industrial Organization from EconWPA
Series data maintained by EconWPA ().