Oligopoly Pricing Old Ideas and New Tools

The "oligopoly problem"-the question of how prices are formed when the market contains only a few competitors-is one of the more persistent problems in the history of economic thought. In this book Xavier Vives applies a modern game-theoretic approach to develop a theory of oligopoly pricing. Vives begins by relating classic contributions to the field-including those of Cournot, Bertrand, Edgeworth, Chamberlin, and Robinson-to modern game theory. In his discussion of basic game-theoretic tools and equilibrium, he pays particular attention to recent developments in the theory of supermodular games. The middle section of the book, an in-depth treatment of classic static models, provides specialized existence results, characterizations of equilibria, extensions to large markets, and an analysis of comparative statics with a view toward applied work. The final chapters examine commitment issues, entry, information transmission, and collusion using a variety of tools: two-stage games, the modeling of competition under asymmetric information and mechanism design theory, and the theory of repeated and dynamic games, including Markov perfect equilibrium and differential games.

Xavier Vives is Director of the Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica, Barcelona.