 Over- and under-investment according to different benchmarksNo 265, Discussion Papers from European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Department of Business Administration and Economics Abstract: In a two-stage oligopoly, with investment in the first stage and quantity or price competition in the second stage, there is a kind of Folk Theorem: We find (i) over-investment if the goods are substitutes and competition is in strategic substitutes, (ii) under-investment if we have either complements instead of substitutes or strategic complements instead of strategic substitutes, and (iii) again over-investment if both attributes change. The existing literature, however, lacks a proof of this theorem and, in particular, it lacks a systematic comparison of the different benchmarks for over-and under-investment. A "naive" benchmark is the efficient investment with respect to the subgame perfect (closed loop) equilibrium quantities. Alternative benchmarks (which are more often proposed) are the open loop equilibrium investment or the welfare maximizing investment. The chosen benchmark is critical because the Folk Theorem applies (under certain conventional conditions) only for the naïve benchmark. The other two benchmarks require additional assumptions or the distinction of subcases. Keywords: Oligopoly; technology choice; efficiency; under-investment; overinvestment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:euvwdp:265 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Discussion Papers from European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Department of Business Administration and Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
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