income adjustments and the role of consumers durables in some leading consumption functions in a seminal study davidson et al i978 hereafter dhsy introduced the error correction form of the consumption function this has proved to be robust to new data and different time periods see hendry i983 and has formed the basis of the consumption equations in several macroeconometric models see davis i 984 in subsequent studies hendry and von ungern sternberg i 98i hereafter hus and von ungern sternberg i 98 i modified the dhsy equation in a number of ways one of particular interest herein was to redefine the income measure to net out the effect of gains or losses due to inflation on liquid assets we consider here two related potential improvements to these widely used consumption functions one concerns the appropriate definition of income if there are not only liquid assets which suffer a value loss under certain conditions but also durable goods which depreciate the other is related to this and concerns an appropriate specification of the steady state consumption function whether static or dynamic for non durables which we take to include services which recognises the existence of durable consumption goods it is argued that if care is not taken the dhsy equation implies a misspecification which leads to an over estimate of the mean lag relating the consumption of non durables to income

on the optimal spacing of currency denominations abstract existing theoretical evidence on optimal currency spacing is fragmentary and to some extent contradictory this note brings together the pieces and tries to solve the puzzle it shows that if the spacing of denominations is uniform then the average number of notes and coins exchanged in a transaction can be minimized by spacing denominations apart by a factor of two even when allowing for overpayment and the return of change

vertical integration market foreclosure and consumer welfare in the cable television industry i examine the effects of vertical integration between programming and distribution in the cable television industry i assess the effects of ownership structure on program offerings prices and subscriptions and i compare consumer welfare across integrated and unintegrated markets the results of this analysis suggest two general conclusions first integrated operators tend to exclude rival program services suggesting that certain program services cannot gain access to the distribution networks of vertically integrated cable system operators second vertical integration does not harm and may actually benefit consumers because of the associated efficiency gains

vertical antitrust policy as a problem of inference the legality of nonprice vertical practices in the u s is determined by their likely competitive effects an optimal enforcement rule combines evidence with theory to update prior beliefs and specifies a decision that minimizes the expected loss because the welfare effects of vertical practices are theoretically ambiguous optimal decisions depend heavily on prior beliefs which should be guided by empirical evidence empirically vertical restraints appear to reduce price and or increase output thus absent a good natural experiment to evaluate a particular restraint s effect an optimal policy places a heavy burden on plaintiffs to show that a restraint is anticompetitive

mergers and acquisitions between risk averse parties abstract this paper evaluates mergers and acquisitions ma however it may yield a higher price for the consumer moreover we show that a decentralized supply chain can be more beneficial for the parties than a centralized supply chain formed by acquisition

anticompetitive vertical integration by a dominant firm backward vertical integration by a dominant firm into an upstream competitive industry causes both input and output prices to rise the dominant firm s advantage may or may not offset the negative effect of higher prices on social welfare whether it does depends on a simple indicator derived from input and output market shares and the degree of prior vertical integration a vertical merger is similar to a hypothetical horizontal merger suggesting that vertical merger policy for this industry should be similar to horizontal merger policy the dominant firm model yields an observable sufficient indicator of welfare improving vertical mergers copyright 1998 by american economic association

housing markets consumption and financial liberalisation in the major economies abstract this paper analyses the implications of relaxing credit restrictions in housing finance markets a theoretical model of the interaction of financial and housing markets and forward looking agents is developed the effects of financial liberalisation in the model are analysed and evidence from the u s a and u k on the impact of easing credit restrictions is presented estimates are also made of the degree to which credit restrictions may bind on households in those countries where the range of mortgage products on offer is still more limited than in the u k and u s a simulations are undertaken to gauge the effect on consumption saving and bequests of wealth of possible future convergence in national systems of housing finance

the variable rate of growth effect in the life cycle saving model the rate of growth in real gnp g affects the aggregate saving rate positively in life cycle saving models this rate of growth effect is invariably estimated as the coefficient of g in the saving function we show that other determinants of the saving rate influence the rate of growth effect in other words the rate of growth effect is not constant specifically the real rate of return on financial assets and the population dependency ratio determine the timing of saving over the life cycle and hence alter the rate of growth effect the dependency ratio also has an effect on the saving rate which is independent of g because it together with the foreign saving rate determines the level of saving over the life cycle

inflation and savings international evidence on inflation induced income losses the fall in the average propensity to consume a p c in the i970s in most industrialised countries has been the subject of much debate it has been ascribed to a wide variety of causes most important it has been widely interpreted as a typical example of a situation in which economic forecasting has failed simply because it did not take into account the psychological effects of rapid changes in the economic environment given the inability of economists to predict sudden changes in consumer expectations these would naturally set severe limits to the usefulness of economic forecasting this paper takes a different approach to the problem it contends that the true fall in the a p c has been considerably lower than indicated by the statistics the argument runs roughly as follows the increase in the rate of inflation has led to a net transfer of real resources away from the personal sector this transfer was due to the fall in the real value of net monetary assets held by the personal sector and issued by the public and business sectors of the economy consumers considered this fall as negative income and adjusted their expenditure accordingly the definition of personal sector disposable income used in the national accounts statistics does not include such a correction in inflationary periods this leads to a large overestimate of true personal sector disposable income given this overestimate of the denominator it is hardly surprising that measured c y should fall when the rate of inflation rises the simplicity of this theory indicates that it can quite easily be subjected to empirical testing the tests proposed in this paper are based on a novel specification of the consumption function developed by davidson et al i978 henceforth dhsy this function has a solid theoretical foundation good statistical properties and allows both shortand long run phenomena to be easily incorporated in an acceptable manner simple theoretical considerations indicate roughly how one should go about measuring true income this corrected measure of income can be incorporated into the consumption function to be estimated in such a way that the coefficient of the correction term is endogenously determined in the regression the statistical properties of the resulting regressions are the evidence leading to a rejection or tentative acceptance of the theory

aggregate consumption of non durables and services and the components of wealth some evidence for the united kingdom the growth of spending on consumer goods in the united kingdom in recent years has been a severe test of previously well established consumption functions this paper assesses the performance of a dominant standard consumption function which relies on income and net liquid assets it turns out that this has not been able to track the growth in consumer spending however developments of this consumption function which find a role for the components of personal sector wealth perform rather well with satisfactory diagnostic statistics and an estimated equation standard error of around 0 4

an empirical analysis of euro cash payments abstract if the denominational structure of the euro is used in an optimal way there should be no preferences for certain coins and notes when making cash payments in kippers et al 2003 an empirical study of cash payments statistica neerlandica 57 484 508 it is documented that the dutch public did have certain preferences concerning the dutch guilder in the sense that a few notes and coins were used less often than they should have been with the advent of the euro which changed the denominational structure from 1 2 1 2 5 guilder to 1 2 5 euro it is of interest to examine whether there are any preferences for euro coins and notes in this paper we use a unique dataset for the netherlands to empirically examine if the euro range is used in an optimal way we find that there are no preferences for certain euro denominations

the optimal denomination of currency l g telser 1995 and scott sumner 1993 argue that the optimal system of denominations of currency would consist of a sequence of denominations that differed from each other by a factor of three the fact is that today no currency follows the powers of three principle the author argues that existing currency systems are the result of an evolution over time that is subject to historical influences and social factors especially the counting systems that societies use copyright 1997 by ohio state university press

the effect of randomized school admissions on voter participation there is little causal evidence on the effect of economic and policy outcomes on voting behavior this paper uses randomized outcomes from a school choice lottery to examine if lottery outcomes affect voting behavior in a school board election we show that losing the lottery has no significant impact on overall voting behavior however among white families those with above median income and prior voting history lottery losers were significantly more likely to vote than lottery winners using propensity score methods we compare the voting of lottery participants to similar families who did not participate in the lottery we find that losing the school choice lottery caused an increase in voter turnout among whites while winning the lottery had no effect relative to non participants overall our empirical results lend support to models of expressive and retrospective voting where likely voters are motivated to vote by past negative policy outcomes

a note on banknote characteristics and the demand for currency by denomination abstract this paper uses characteristics analysis to explain the demand for swiss banknotes by denomination we find that the characteristics of banknotes explain to a large extent the currency mix that the public wishes to hold an increase in the price level and in real income is found to favor large denominations while an increase in velocity and in interest rates is found to increase the share of small bills the model is used to predict the demand for a frs 200 banknote a denomination which does not exist at the moment in switzerland

beer and the tie did divestiture of brewer owned public houses lead to higher beer prices in 1989 the united kingdom monopolies and mergers commission mmc recommended measures that eventually led brewers to divest themselves of 14 000 public houses the mmc claimed that their recommendations would lower retail prices and increase consumer choice since that time however retail prices have risen this paper contains an econometric analysis of the transition period the analysis is based on a model of the relationship between retail price and retail organisational form that emphasises how exclusive dealing clauses and strategic factors interact in 1989 in an important decision the united kingdom monopolies and mergers commission mmc recommended measures that eventually led brewers to divest themselves of 14 000 public houses the mmc claimed that their recommendations would lower retail prices and increase consumer choice there is considerable doubt however that their objectives were achieved indeed since the time that the recommendations were implemented retail prices have risen it is not clear however if prices would have increased in the absence of divestiture one goal of my research is to provide an answer to this question the mmc s recommendations created an exceptional opportunity to assess the effects that different contractual arrangements have on retail prices indeed one would like to investigate this relationship ceteris paribus unfortunately however the choice of vertical market structure is normally endogenous and it is impossible to condition on all of the factors that affect the contracting decision in the uk beer industry in contrast the government ordered changes in the type and terms of the contracts under which national brewers could operate their licensed premises increased separation between brewer and publican therefore was not due to changes in economic conditions moreover some premises the free houses that were not owned by a brewer were not affected by the beer orders the existence of a control group facilitates the analysis by strengthening the conclusions that one can draw in recent years economists have moved away from simple theories of vertical

agency theory and franchising some empirical results this article provides an empirical assessment of various agency theoretic explanations for franchising including risk sharing one sided moral hazard and two sided moral hazard the empirical models use proxies for factors such as risk moral hazard and franchisors need for capital to explain both franchisors decisions about the terms of their contracts royalty rates and up front franchise fees and the extent to which they use franchising in this article i exploit several new sources of data on franchising to construct a cross section of 548 franchisors involved in various business activities in the united states in 1986 the data are most consistent with a model based on two sided moral hazard the empirical models are also more successful at explaining the extent to which franchisors choose to franchise stores than at explaining the terms of franchise contracts finally contrary to the predictions of several theoretical models i find that royalty rates and franchise fees are not negatively related

vertical relationships and competition in retail gasoline markets empirical evidence from contract changes in southern california comment this study examines how much if any of the differences in retail gasoline prices between markets is attributable to differences in the composition of vertical contract types at gasoline stations in each market the purchase of the independent retail gasoline chain thrifty by arco provides a unique opportunity to examine the effects of changes in different vertical contract types on local retail prices this event caused sharp changes in the market share of i fully vertically integrated stations and ii independent stations differentially affecting local markets in the los angeles and san diego metropolitan areas using unique and detailed station level data this study examines how these sharp changes affected local retail prices the detailed data and the research design based on the thrifty station conversions allow for credible estimation of the effects of the market share of independent retailers and vertically integrated retailers on local market prices controlling for any omitted factors at the station level and the city level over time results for the los angeles and san diego metropolitan areas indicate that a decrease in the market share of independent stations has a significant positive impact on local retail price however a change in the market share of refiner owned and operated branded stations does not have a significant impact on local market price these results have important implications as policy makers consider the regulation of vertical contracts as a means to increase competition in gasoline markets the research design and detailed data also allow for inference on the underlying nature of retail gasoline competition

can vertical integration by a monopsonist harm consumer welfare abstract vertical integration by a monopsonist is generally believed not to harm consumers this paper demonstrates in a natural economic setting that this conventional wisdom may not hold we model one on one bargaining between a monopsonist and independent suppliers when the set of suppliers cannot be expanded easily ex post and show that a vertically separated monopolist is vulnerable to holdup without integration we demonstrate that a bottleneck monopsonist has an incentive to encourage more upstream entry than would arise in a pure neoclassical monopoly having more suppliers mitigates the holdup power of any one this however distorts the cost structure of the industry toward greater industry output and hence lowers final good prices vertical integration mitigates the hold up problem faced by the monopsonist it allows it to generate and appropriate a greater level of industry profits at the expense of consumers

the competitive impact of vertical integration by multiproduct firms we study the impact of vertical integration on pricing incentives in multiproduct industries to do so we exploit recent variation in vertical structure in the us carbonated beverage industry while the elimination of double marginalization with vertical integration is normally characterized as procompetitive economic theory predicts that it may cause anticompetitive price increases in multiproduct industries we indeed find that vertical integration causes price decreases in products with eliminated double margins but price increases in the other products sold by the integrated firm these results provide new evidence of anticompetitive effects of vertical mergers

the limits of monopolization through acquisition we address the question of whether competitive acquisition of firms by their rivals can result in complete or partial monopolization of a homogeneous product industry this question is modeled in terms of two distinct three stage noncoopera tive games analysis of subgame perfect pure strategy nash equilibria of these games discloses that under simplifying assumptions monopolization of an industry through acquisition is limited to industries with relatively few firms partial monopolization is either limited in scope or can be completely eliminated by prohibiting any owner from acquiring over 50 percent of the firms in the industry

downstream vertical foreclosure and upstream innovation i examine a link between downstream foreclosure and upstream innovation the crucial ingredient of the model is the presence of dynamic economies of scale upstream in the form of competition in r d the reason an upstream supplier has a captive buyer is to force rival suppliers to incur the disadvantages of low scale production and discourage them from innovating the downstream buyer is offered favorable terms and is convinced to sign an exclusive supply contract and accept captivity in this context downstream foreclosure may reduce consumer welfare

more on optimal denominations for coins and currency abstract telser telser l b 1995 optimal denominations for coins and currency economics letters 49 425 427 has shown that the problem of b chet helps answer the question of the optimal denominational structure of currency in the u s and u k this note provides further evidence to support this claim using cross country data 1997 elsevier science s a

efficiency effects of exclusive territories evidence from the indiana beer market the welfare effects of vertically imposed exclusive territories and the appropriate antitrust policy toward them have long been debated this paper sheds light on the exclusive territory controversy by examing the effects of indiana s 1979 ban on the grant of exclusive territories to beer wholesalers using time series data for 1948 1990 we find the ban reduced beer consumption in indiana by 6 percent coupled with previous evidence that indiana s ban reduced price our results suggest that exclusive territories in the beer industry increase demand and enhance welfare by stimulating the provision of dealer services

do fast food chains price discriminate on the race and income characteristics of an area this article reports tests for differences in prices charged by fast food restaurants that serve markets with customers of widely divergent incomes and ethnic backgrounds the data contain detailed prices on items sold at over 400 burger king wendy s kfc and roy rogers restaurants in new jersey and pennsylvania locations i find significant differences in price based on the race and income characteristics of a zip code region when income and cost differences are taken into account meal prices rise approximately 5 for a 50 rise in the black population

statistical analysis of coins lost in circulation the loss rate of coins in the israeli pound il series issued in israel in 1960 1979 is estimated and the connection between it and the characteristics of the coins is examined a lifetime model with time dependent hazard rate and an estimation procedure for the model parameters are presented the estimates are then used to forecast the number of coins surviving in circulation and the median lifetime of different denominations the data are random samples drawn from the coins in circulation at a point in time the sampled coins being sorted by date of issue

prices for cash and cash for prices theory and evidence on convenient pricing a transaction between a seller and a buyer incurs a payment cost the payment cost is borne by the seller depending on the payment instrument the buyer chooses cash or card card payment is more costly than cash payment so the seller prefers that the buyer pays cash in this article we study the strategy of the seller setting a convenient price which simplifies transactions and pushes the buyer to pay cash the theoretical analysis which models both the seller and the buyer in a game setting derives two propositions 1 the seller is more likely to set a more convenient price and 2 the buyer is more likely to pay cash a more convenient price the empirical analysis supports both propositions thus sellers adopt a convenience pricing strategy prices for cash and this strategy pushes buyers to pay cash cash for prices

an investigation of the long run properties of aggregate non durable consumers expenditure in the united this paper estimates the effects of the modeling of nondurable consumption in the light of the five years of new data since the publication of the paper by j e h davidson et al 1978 and the development of the new cointegration technique of r f engle and c w j granger 1987 existing models are found to be inadequate on two grounds they fail parameter stability tests and they do not contain a suitable equilibrium specification the paper uses the cointegration approach to search for an encompassing model that is both stable and cointegrates the main finding is that the analysis must be extended to allow for differential income effects caused by changing higher rate income tax bands copyright 1989 by royal economic society

vertical mergers in multi product industries and edgeworth s paradox of taxation when a two product monopolist merges with one of its suppliers thus eliminating the double marginalization for one of its goods three qualitative effects on downstream prices can result the monopolist might 1 lower both prices 2 lower the price of the good for which the double marginalization is eliminated and raise the price of the other good or 3 raise both prices since some and even all prices can increase mergers of successive monopolists in multiproduct industries do not necessarily improve welfare this result differs from the single product case in which such mergers necessarily increase welfare copyright 1991 by blackwell publishing ltd

alternative approaches to evaluation in empirical microeconomics four alternative but related approaches to empirical evaluation of policy interventions are studied social experiments natural experiments matching methods and instrumental variables in each case the necessary assumptions and the data requirements are considered for estimation of a number of key parameters of interest these key parameters include the average treatment effect the treatment on the treated and the local average treatment effect some issues of implementation and interpretation are discussed drawing on the labour market programme evaluation literature

are all the good men married uncovering the sources of the marital wage premium a longstanding and yet unsettled question in labor economics is does marriage cause men s wages to rise cross sectional wage studies consistently find that married men earn significantly higher wages than do men who are not currently married however it is well known that inferring causal relationships from crosssectional analysis is inappropriate because of the biases introduced by unobserved heterogeneity as a means of circumventing this problem this paper uses data on identical twins to control for unobserved heterogeneity our estimates suggest that marriage increases men s wages by as much as 27 and that little if any of the cross sectional relationship between marriage and wages is due to selection in addition we find little evidence that the marital wage premium is a consequence of household specialization

currency by denomination abstract the distribution of the dutch currency circulation by denomination is related to the requirements of efficient payment i e payment involving a minimum number of coins or banknotes for any amount

aggregate consumption and the distribution of income in the united kingdom an econometric analysis blinder i975 explained this omission by arguing that with the ascendancy of the friedman 1957 and modigliani and brumberg i954 models of consumer behaviour the view that income distribution affected aggregate consumption fell into disrepute in academic circles it was supplanted by the view that marginal and perhaps even average propensities to consume are constant over the income distribution pp 447 8 the life cycle model as is well known derives the aggregate consumption function from the hypothesis that the consumer chooses the time path of consumption which maximises lifetime utility subject to the constraint that the present discounted value of all consumption plus the present discounted value of the bequest if any is equal to lifetime disposable resources a consequence of such a hypothesis is that consumption at each instant is proportional to lifetime disposable resources with the constant of proportionality dependent only on age length of life the rate of interest and tastes in their empirical work friedman and modigliani may also have had to ignore income distribution due to lack of data however blinder 1975 went on to show that even under the life cycle hypothesis provided that the marginal utility of bequests say f was different

divisionalization franchising and divestiture incentives in oligopoly a two stage game is used to model firms strategic incentives to divide production among autonomous competing units through divisionalization franchising or divestiture firms simultaneously choose their number of competing units which then engage in cournot competition while it is costly to form autonomous units each firm does so in equilibrium thus reducing firm profits and increasing social welfare relative to the case where firms cannot form competing units with linear demand and costs duopolists choose the socially optimal number of competing units oligopolies with larger numbers of firms choose too many the case of nonlinear demand is also examined copyright 1996 by american economic association

net liquid assets and net illiquid assets in the consumption function some evidence for the united kingdom abstract this note reports details of estimating consumption equations for the united kingdom which separate net wealth into net liquid assets and net illiquid assets the estimation framework is related to that in the influential article by hendry and von ungern sternberg 1981 but recognises the importance of defining income to allow not only for inflation induced losses but also for depreciation provisions the empirical results provide some support for a role for both liquid and illiquid assets in determining consumption decisions

equilibrium vertical foreclosure the authors formulate a complete but analytically simple equilibrium model of vertical mergers to evaluate the logic of standard vertical foreclosure claims and the criticisms made of those claims the model includes incentives of the integrated firm and unintegrated input suppliers to exclude rivals and the potential holdout problem in this fully specified model vertical foreclosure can emerge in equilibrium copyright 1990 by american economic association

market foreclosure and vertical merger a case study of the vertical merger between turner broadcasting and time warner abstract we employ an event study methodology the event being the vertical merger between time warner and turner broadcasting distribution and programming respectively in the cable television industry we assess the effects of the merger on final prices subscriptions and carriage and marketing decisions of time warner the analysis finds several interesting facts first foreclosure in time warner markets following the merger is observed for the rival channels that are not integrated with any cable distributors second the turner broadcasting channels that increased market shares because of this merger appeared to be foreclosed by time warner prior to the merger the preference for own channels by time warner persisted despite a lower quality of channel bundles in its markets efficiency gains from the merger were not passed on to consumers

an empirical examination of government expenditures and the ex ante crowding out effect for the british economy the conventional macroeconomic view that consumers make their consumption decisions without regard for goods provided by the government has been examined in the literature moreover the line of research that questions this conventional view argues that this separation does not have a firm theoretical backing if consumers take government expenditures into account when maximizing their utility functions then the effects of fiscal policy actions will tend to appear weaker than those suggested by most conventional analyses the examination of this issue should therefore have far reaching political as well as economic implications within the context of traditional fiscal policies this paper will empirically examine the ex antecrowding out effect of government expenditures upon private consumption expenditures for the british economy an aggregate consumption function is derived and estimated in the context of a simultaneous equations model based on intertemporal consumption theory the empirical results sho

the way we pay with money we assess the sample distribution of payments in the netherlands using survey data for 1984 1986 the payment pattern fits a lognormal distribution with peaks caused by the price tags of the purchased items the results are used to simulate the use of coins and notes which indicates a rather efficient denominational mix but a high degree of hoarding for the large bank notes

increasing the profits of a subset of firms in oligopoly models with strategic substitutes consider an industry composed of n firms in a symmetric equilibrium designate a subset of s n firms and marginally reduce the strategic variables of the firms in the subset if the remaining firms simultaneously make the best reply to this exogenous displacement under what circumstances will profits of the firms in the designated subset increase we show that in the case of cournot competition among producers of perfect substitutes a marginal contraction is strictly beneficial strictly harmful if and only if the number of firms in the designated subset exceeds the adjusted number of firms outside it by strictly more strictly less than one the adjustment factor is unity when cost and demand functions are linear but more generally depends on the convexity of the cost and demand curves thus a marginal contraction of two firms in a triopoly has no effect on the profits of firms in the subset if cost and demand functions are linear if instead cost is linear but the inverse demand function is strictly concave strictly convex a marginal contraction will strictly decrease strictly increase profits the analysis is extended to the effects of nonmarginal exogenous changes in the outputs of the constrained firms this extension has implications for the relationship of stackelberg sequential move and nash simultaneous move equilibria our analysis has broad application to illustrate we show that it unifies results in the literature on export subsidies horizontal mergers and strikes the paper is organized as follows in section i our comparative static result is derived in section ii we present a wide range of applications in the conclusion and the appendix we generalize our analysis to other situations involving strategic substitutes

divisionalization and entry deterrence this paper assumes that incumbent firms can create new independent divisions more cheaply than potential entrants who must incur the additional overhead costs of new entry the main theoretical result is that such divisionalization ability leads perfectly informed incumbents to preempt all rational entry into their industries in contrast existing models of entry deterrence imply that informed incumbents even those with steadily decreasing average costs will often allow rational entry our result may explain why successful large scale entry by firms with no informational advantage is extremely rare the use of divisions to preempt entry may also explain why large firms in high profit oligopolies often divisionalize allowing their divisions to compete freely despite the negative pecuniary externality that each division imposes on others

savings in new zealand during inflationary times measurement determinants and implications real rates of return predominantly as a result of in model of saving behavior is constructed to test the role creased price inflation and slow rates of economic growth for instance deane 1980 stated that inflation taxation and interest rate variables play in determining saving the estimation results are then the behaviour ofsaven in times of inflation is still one of the unsolved used to identify the implications for future economic mysteries of economics to the surprise of economists in the early growth in new zealand in terms of saving assuming 1970s when inflation was accelerating sharply in most western nations consumers saved a higher than expected percentage of the stressed in the literature their income p 377 that of releasing factors for capital formation

on some estimates of an asian savings function abstract recent empirical studies have led many economists to argue that a number of countries in asia could stimulate savings if they permitted higher rates of interest and accepted less foreign aid this paper critically examines the econometric basis of these claims for this purpose the model specifications found in past work are encompassed within a more general model so that they may be replicated and tested as restricted forms

on the existence of cournot equilibrium this paper examines the existence of n firm cournot equilibrium in a market for a single homogeneous commodity it proves that if each firm s marginal revenue declines as the aggregate output of other firms increases which is implied by concave inverse demand then a cournot equilibrium exists without assuming that firms have nondecreasing marginal cost or identical technologies also if the marginal revenue condition fails at a potential optimal point there is a set of firms such that no cournot equilibrium exists the paper also contains an example of nonexistence with two nonidentical firms each with constant returns to scale production