Cournot games with biconcave demand

Arbeitspapier

Biconcavity is a simple condition on inverse demand that corresponds to the ordinary concept of concavity after simultaneous parameterized transformations of price and quantity. The notion is employed here in the framework of the homogeneous-good Cournot model with potentially heterogeneous firms. The analysis leads to unified conditions, respectively, for the existence of a pure-strategy equilibrium via nonincreasing best-response selections, for existence via quasiconcavity, and for uniqueness of the equilibrium. The usefulness of the generalizations is illustrated in cases where inverse demand is either nearly linear or isoelastic. It is also shown that commonly made assumptions regarding large outputs are often redundant.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Paper ; No. 16

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Noncooperative Games ; Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets ; Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
• Subject: Cournot games ; existence and uniqueness of a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium ; generalized concavity ; supermodularity ; Gesamtwirtschaftliche Nachfrage ; Duopol ; Nash-Gleichgewicht ; Nichtkooperatives Spiel ; Theorie

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Ewerhart, Christian
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Zurich, Department of Economics
• (where): Zurich
• (when): 2013

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.5167/uzh-51520
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/77479
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET