5.5 寡头-讲义经济学.pdf

Part V Firm Behavior and the Organization of Industry Oligopoly The Features of Oligopoly • A few sellers sell in the market (thus, market power is implied) • The sellers offer identical or differentiated goods (services) • Strategic interdependence – One seller’s choice have a substantial effect on others’ payoffs (e.g. profits) and thus others’ choices – Cooperative – Non-cooperative • Game theory is a suitable tool to analyze this kind of strategically interdependent situations A Basic Tension of Firm Behavior • Collusion vs. self-interest – If the firms cooperatively sell at the optimal monopoly price pm(MC), they collectively get a monopoly profit; – Since pm(MC), all firms has an incentive to produce and sell more from a self-interest perspective (for their own profit) ; – Collusive cartels (e.g. OPEC) are usually instable. In general, this tension leads to a price between pm and pc , and a quantity between pm and pc , where “c” indicates “perfectly competitive”. Thus the efficiency outcome is between those of perfect competition and monopoly. The Nash Equilibrium • Game theory studies how people behave in strategically interdependent situations: – When one player chooses her strategy, she must consider how other players might respond to the strategy she chooses. • A Nash Equilibrium is a profile of strategies such that for each player, her strategy is the best response to other players’ strategies. • A Nash Equilibrium is self-enforceable and thus can be taken as a reasonable prediction of the outcome of a game. The Cournot Quantity Competition (An example) • n (1n∞)sellers sell an identical good in the market; • Sellers choose their own output (quantity) produced at a zero marginal cost; • The market price