What do we know about duopolies? Insights from the history of cellular phones

Nicolas Garcia-Vicente, Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz and Martin Campbell-Kelly

Telecommunications Policy, 2022, vol. 46, issue 2

Abstract: The theoretical literature on duopolies—the Bertrand and Cournot models and their variants—generates a range of predictions for equilibrium prices and quantities depending on assumptions. Here we compare behavior in cellular-network services across countries in the 1980s and early 1990s. We study transitions from monopoly to duopoly and from duopoly to oligopoly with more than two competitors. Through comparisons across countries and time periods, we isolate factors that explain why duopolistic competition had a larger impact on prices in certain markets than in others. Among other things, we find that two institutional factors played an important role: the way beauty contests for additional licenses were designed and whether duopolists expected additional entry into the network-services market or not.

Keywords: Duopoly; Cellular network services; Cross-country comparisons (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 L13 N70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308596121001634
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:telpol:v:46:y:2022:i:2:s0308596121001634

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... /30471/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.telpol.2021.102259

Access Statistics for this article

Telecommunications Policy is currently edited by Erik Bohlin

More articles in Telecommunications Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().