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The Theory of Industrial Organization

Originally propounded by the 16th-century scholars of the University of Salamanca, the concept of purchasing power parity (PPP) was revived in the interwar period in the context of the debate concerning the appropriate level at which to re-establish international exchange rate parities. Broadly accepted as a long-run equilibrium condition in the post-war period, it first was advocated as a short-run equilibrium by many international economists in the first few years following the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s and then increasingly came under attack on both theoretical and empirical grounds from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s. Accordingly, over the last three decades, a large literature has built up that examines how much the data deviated from theory, and the fruits of this research have provided a deeper understanding of how well PPP applies in both the short run and the long run. Since the mid 1990s, larger datasets and nonlinear econometric methods, in particular, have improved estimation. As deviations narrowed between real exchange rates and PPP, so did the gap narrow between theory and data, and some degree of confidence in long-run PPP began to emerge again. In this respect, the idea of long-run PPP now enjoys perhaps its strongest support in more than 30 years, a distinct reversion in economic thought.

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The purchasing power parity debate

A wide variety of work in social science concerns sequences of events or phenomena. This essay reviews concepts of sequence and methods for analyzing sequences. After a brief definitional discussion, I consider sequence literatures from various areas. I then discuss recent methodologies for sequence analysis. I review stepwise approaches like Markovian and event history analysis as well as whole sequence approaches resting on new developments in biology and other fields.

Sequence analysis: new methods for old ideas

Partial privatization in mixed duopoly

A club is a voluntary group of individuals who derive mutual benefit from sharing one or more of the following: production costs, the members' characteristics, or a good characterized by excludable benefits. When production costs are shared and the good is purely private, a private good club is being analyzed (McGuire 1972; Wiseman 1957). If membership characteristics differ and motivate sharing, then membership fees will differ among members (DeSerpa 1977; Scotchmer 1994b; Scotchmer and Wooders 1987). Such fees are nonanonymous , inasmuch as a fee structure is related to the identity and attributes of a member. The focus of our analysis is the sharing of an excludable (rivalrous) public good, which we term a club good . Unless otherwise specified, crowding is assumed to be independent of the individual and hence anonymous. A number of aspects of the club definition deserve highlighting. Privately owned and operated clubs must be voluntary; members choose to belong because they anticipate a net benefit from membership. Thus, the utility jointly derived from membership and from the consumption of other goods must exceed the utility associated with nonmembership status. Furthermore, the net gain in utility from membership must exceed or equal membership fees or toll payments. This voluntarism serves as the first characteristic by which to distinguish between pure public goods and club goods. In the case of a pure public good, voluntarism may be absent, since the good might harm some recipients (e.g., defense to a pacifist, fluoridation to someone who opposes its use).

The theory of externalities, public goods, and club goods: Homogeneous clubs and local public goods

A study of the optimal behavior of a public firm in a market where there are also n private firms. The public firm aims at maximizing a social welfare function while the private firms aim at maximizing profit. The authors compare four possible regimes: (1) the public firm is a welfare maximizing Stackelberg leader; (2) it is a welfare maximizing Cournot-Nash player; (3) it is a profit maximizer (pure oligopoly); and (4) the whole industry is under government control (nationalization). When the number of firms is sufficiently large, the optimal strategy of a welfare maximizing firm is to act as if it wanted to maximize its profit. Copyright 1989 by Royal Economic Society.

Alternative strategies of a public enterprise in oligopoly

. In this paper we review various models that have been proposed for the study of mixed oligopoly, that is markets in which private and public firm compete on equal basis using only market instruments.

Game theoretic models of mixed oligopoly

In this paper we compare the equilibrium R & D investment under Bertrand and Cournot competition in a symmetric and homogeneous oligopoly. It is shown that, although the R&D investment is greater under Bertrand competition, social welfare, net of R & D costs, may be greater under Cournot competition. This conflict between static and dynamic efficiency arises because too many resources may be invested in R & D when there is price competition in the product market.

R & D investment in a symmetric and homogeneous oligopol

Regulating innovative activity

We study the R&D performance of Cournot aligopolists. To this end we model a one-shot noncooperative game in which firms invest in R&D, with the aim of being first in an uncertain competition for a patentable cost-reducing innovation. The incentives to innovate are market profits and not exogenously given prizes as in most of the earlier literature. Thus, incentives depend on the number of firms. We show that increasing rivalry may increase or decrease the individual R&D espenditure, there may be underinvestment with the various effect to the socially optimal level. Moreover, we identify the various effects which are responsible for the difference between our results and some conclusions of closely related contributions.

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Flavio Delbono

Papers

Alternative strategies of a public enterprise in oligopoly

Game theoretic models of mixed oligopoly

R & D investment in a symmetric and homogeneous oligopol

Regulating innovative activity

Incentives to Innovate in a Cournot Oligopoly