Monopolistic Competition: A Dual Approach

Paolo Bertoletti () and Federico Etro ()

No 43, DEM Working Papers Series from University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management

Abstract: We study monopolistic competition under indirect additivity of preferences. This is dual to the Dixit-Stiglitz model, where direct additivity is assumed, with the CES case as the only common ground. Other examples include (perceived) demand functions that are exponential or linear. Our equilibrium results are generally in contrast with those received by the literature. An increase of the number of consumers never affects prices and firms’ size, but increases proportionally the number of firms, creating pure gains from variety. An increase in individual income increases prices (and more than proportionally the number of varieties) and reduces firms’ size if and only if the price elasticity of demand is increasing. We also study the endogenous market structure with Bertrand competition (in which a pro-competitive effect of market size arises) and the case for inefficient entry.

Keywords: Monopolistic competition; Indirect additivity; Dixit-Stiglitz model; Endogenous entry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D11 D43 F12 L11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2013-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com, nep-cse and nep-mic
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dem-web.unipv.it/web/docs/dipeco/quad/ps/RePEc/pav/demwpp/DEMWP0043.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:pav:demwpp:demwp0043

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DEM Working Papers Series from University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alice Albonico ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).