Investment timing and capacity decisions with time-to-build in a duopoly market

Haejun Jeon

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 2021, vol. 122, issue C

Abstract: In this study, we investigate optimal investment timing and capacity decisions in the presence of time-to-build and competition. Due to uncertain time-to-build, a leader, who invests first, may have its product enter the market after a follower’s. We show that a dominated firm with the longer time-to-build can become a leader by making the investment earlier than a dominant firm with shorter investment lags. The leader’s capacity choice increases with the dominated firm’s time-to-build, even if the dominated entity is the leader. This finding is consistent with the observation in the electric vehicles market in which a relatively new firm with little experience of mass production makes aggressive investment early on, while the biggest carmakers capable of mass production are timing their investment. With a welfare-maximizing policy, however, the dominant firm with the shorter time-to-build always becomes the leader. There is a significant loss of social welfare with the dominated firm being the leader, and the loss increases with the asymmetry of time-to-build.

Keywords: Time-to-build; Investment lags; Investment capacity; Duopoly market; Real options (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D25 G32 L13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165188920301962
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:dyncon:v:122:y:2021:i:c:s0165188920301962

DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2020.104028

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control is currently edited by J. Bullard, C. Chiarella, H. Dawid, C. H. Hommes, P. Klein and C. Otrok

More articles in Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().