Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
884383 Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 2008 12 Pages PDF
Abstract

This article reconsiders whether the Cournot equilibrium really becomes a perfect competition equilibrium when the number of competitors goes to infinity. It has been questioned whether the equilibrium remains stable with an increasing number of firms. Contraindications were given for linear and for isoelastic demand functions. However, marginal costs were then taken as constant, which means adding more potentially infinite-sized firms. As we want to compare cases with few large firms to cases with many small firms, the model is tuned so as to incorporate capacity limits, decreasing with an increasing number of firms. Then destabilization is avoided.

Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Economics, Econometrics and Finance Economics and Econometrics
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