To Commit or Not to Commit in Product-Innovation Timing Games

Sun Chia-Hung ()
Additional contact information
Sun Chia-Hung: Department of Economics, Soochow University, No. 56, Kueiyang Street, Section 1, Taipei 100, Taiwan

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2025, vol. 25, issue 2, 177-208

Abstract: This research analyzes a firm’s timing of bringing a new product to the market, based on a product-innovation timing game in which the quality of a new product increases over time. We explore the equilibrium outcomes when both firms can precommit to their timing of market entry (the so-called precommitment game), when they cannot credibly precommit to their timing of market entry (the so-called preemption game), and when only one firm can precommit to its timing of market entry (the so-called mixed precommitment game). Sequential entry is the unique equilibrium outcome in all three games. We finally discuss two extended timing games with endogenous commitment choices. The equilibrium involves a precommitment subgame in the endogenous precommitment game with observable delay, while mixed precommitment subgames appear to be the equilibria in undominated strategies in the endogenous precommitment game with action commitment.

Keywords: timing game; precommitment game; preemption game; mixed precommitment game; endogenous precommitment game (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 L13 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2024-0147 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

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:bpj:bejeap:v:25:y:2025:i:2:p:177-208:n:1007

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bejeap/html

DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2024-0147

Access Statistics for this article

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy is currently edited by Hendrik Jürges and Sandra Ludwig

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().