When Does Procompetitive Entry Imply Excessive Entry?

Kiminori Matsuyama
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Philip Ushchev

No 14991, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The Dixit-Stiglitz model of monopolistic competition with symmetric CES demand system with gross substitutes is widely used as a building block across many applied general equilibrium fields. Two of its remarkable features are the invariance of the markup rate and the optimality of the free-entry equilibrium. Of course, neither of these two features is robust. Departure from CES makes entry either procompetitive or anticompetitive (i.e., the markup rate either goes down or goes up as more firms enter). Departure from CES also makes entry either excessive or insufficient. But how is the condition for procompetitive vs. anticompetitive entry related to that for excessive vs. insufficient entry? To investigate this question, we extend the Dixit-Stiglitz monopolistic competition model to three classes of homothetic demand systems, which are mutually exclusive except that each of them contains CES as a knife-edge case. In all three classes, we show, among others, that entry is excessive (insufficient) when it is globally procompetitive (anticompetitive) and that, in the presence of the choke price, entry is procompetitive and excessive at least for a sufficiently large market size.

Keywords: Procompetitive vs. anticompetitive entry; Excessive vs. insufficient entry; Monopolistic competition; Homothetic demand systems with gross substitutes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 D61 D62 L13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14991 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

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:cpr:ceprdp:14991

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14991

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().