From Bertrand to Cournot via Kreps and Scheinkman: a hazardous journey

Xavier Wauthy

No 2014026, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: The mininal core of strategic decisions a firm has to make is three-fold: What to produce? At which scale? At what price? A full-fledged theory of oligopolistic competition should be able to embrace these three dimensions jointly. Starting from the Cournot-Bertrand dispute and the stream of research it gave birth to, this survey shows that we are far from having such a theory at our disposal today. Many papers cover two dimensions out of three and display insightful results but no paper satisfactorily addresses the complete picture. I discuss the limitations of the different approaches that have been undertaken. This discussion sets a clear agenda for further theoretical research on the oligopoly front.

Keywords: Bertrand; Cournot; Edgeworth; product differentiation; capacity constraints (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-07-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-ind
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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