Technological Progress in Races for Product Supremacy

Nguyen, Thang (2004): Technological Progress in Races for Product Supremacy.

Abstract

How does market organization affect quality innovation efforts and social welfare? Three stochastic dynamic market structures considered are monopoly, duopoly, and social planning. Products can be either linearly or nonlinearly substitutable. The introduction of a step function allows richer innovation strategies. First, given nonlinear substitution, a duopoly may follow an unbalanced evolution path and have a technology frontier not dominated by that in social planning. This result does not hold for the linear substitution case. Second, ex ante and long-run welfare values are always the highest in social planning and the lowest in monopoly. Thus, policies should encourage static and dynamic competition.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: R&D; quality innovation; product supremacy
• Subjects: L - Industrial Organization > L1 - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance > L13 - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets; D - Microeconomics > D4 - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design > D43 - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection; L - Industrial Organization > L1 - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance > L15 - Information and Product Quality ; Standardization and Compatibility; D - Microeconomics > D9 - Intertemporal Choice > D92 - Intertemporal Firm Choice, Investment, Capacity, and Financing; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O3 - Innovation ; Research and Development ; Technological Change ; Intellectual Property Rights > O31 - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives; D - Microeconomics > D2 - Production and Organizations > D21 - Firm Behavior: Theory

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