Transportation Technologyin a Duopoly Model of International Trade

Andrea Mantovani

Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna

Abstract: In this paper I will evaluate the role of R&D investment in transport and communication in a duopoly with trade. I will in fact consider the strategic behavior of two firms located in two different countries. They can activate R&D investments in order to improve the technology of the transportation process. Transport and communication (TC) costs are of iceberg type, i.e. only a fraction of the goods shipped abroad reaches the foreign market. I will then study a game in which firms may priorly commit themselves to a certain level of R&D investment and then they play in the market. As for the market game, I will consider both a Cournot duopoly with homogeneous products and a Bertrand duopoly with differentiated goods. In both models, my analysis suggests that firms are willing to invest in transport and communication technology when such a strategy turns out to be efficient, i.e. when it does not imply an excessive cost. More precisely, a variety of equilibria will arise as a result of different levels of TC r&D efficiency. If the cost is low the game has an equilibrium in dominant strategies where both firms invest in TC and maximize the aggregate profit. As the cost increases, the game becomes a prisoner`s dilemma; both firms still invest in Tc but they do not reach the Pareto-efficient solution. For even higher levels of the cost required, the game shows an equilibrium in dominant strategies where no firms finances TC R&D and the aggregate profit is maximized.

Date: 2001
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://amsacta.unibo.it/4882/1/417.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:bol:bodewp:417

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna ().