Maison de l'économie et de la gestion d'Aix
424 chemin du viaduc, CS80429
13097 Aix-en-Provence Cedex 2
Soubeyran
Publications
We analyze a model of lobbying by oligopolists who allocate resources between lobbying and internal cost-reducing activities. We ask the following questions: (i) if firms differ with respect to comparative advantage in lobbying, what is the equilibrium allocation of resources between lobbying and cost-reducing activities? (ii) can the possibility of lobbying reverse the profitability ranking among firms? (iii) under what condition is the conventional wisdom (that highly concentrated industries tend to obtain more protection) valid? On analyse un modèle de lobbying par des entrepreneurs qui allouent leur temps entre les activités de supervision. On donne des réponses aux questions suivantes: (i) quelles sont les allocations de ressources en équilibre? Le lobbying pourrait-il renverser l'ordre de rentabilité parmi les firmes? (iii) y a-t-il une corrélation entre le degré de concentration d'une industrie et la protection qu'elle obtient du gouvernement?
[fre] Nous montrons que quand des firmes polluantes sont des concurrents à la Cournot, elles peuvent avoir une incitation à utiliser des permis de pollution comme moyen indirect de coordonner leur production. Si les firmes sont initialement identiques, les échanges de permis peuvent conduire à un oligopole asymétrique. Le cas de firmes initialement asymétriques est aussi considéré. [eng] Emissions Trading and Asymmetric Oligopoly by Ngo Van Long and Antoine Soubeyran . We show that when polluting firms are Cournot competitors, they may have an incentive to use emissions trading to indirectly co-ordinate their production. If the firms are initially identical, emissions trading can create an asymmetric oligopoly. The case of initially asymmetric firms is also considered.
We provide sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of a Cournot equilibrium. The contraction mapping approach is used. Equilibrium is characterized in terms of marginal costs. The result is useful for applications to two-stage games, where, in the first stage, firms incur costs to manipulate their marginal costs of production. Cet article donne des conditions suffisantes pour l'existence et l'unicité de l'équilibre de Cournot. Notre résultat s'applique aux jeux de Cournot à deux étapes. Dans un premier temps, les firmes manipulent leurs coûts marginaux en choisissant un paramètre. Dans un deuxième temps, les firmes font la concurrence à la Cournot.
No abstract is available for this item.
We derive the characteristics of firm-specific strategic trade policies when industries consist of heterogenous firms, and show how the informational requirements for policy design are thereby expanded. A knowledge of the Herfindahl index of concentration of the foreign industry is required for the design of optimal protection for domestic firms. It is shown that optimal firm-specific tariffs reduce the degree of foreign concentration, thus shifting rents to domestic firms.
Marshallian districts are locales that accomodate a large number of small firms producing similar goods to be exported and benefit from the accumulation of know-how associated with workers residing there. We study the making of such districts by assuming that the cost function of a firm is a decreasing function of the total output produced in the [ast by the firms established in the locale.
We propose a simple model of a partially integrated industry which explicitly takes into account persistent production cost differences across upstream firms, such as one might observe in natural resource industries. The model allows us to highlight the respective roles of strategic considerations and of cost considerations in the determination of an integrated firm's interaction with the non- integrated sector of the industry and, in the end, on its relative upstream-downstream specialization. Stylized facts from the world oil industry are used to illustrate the type of behaviour one might expect in this context.
No abstract is available for this item.
[fre] Dans un précédent article (Carraro et Soubeyran, 1995) on a défini l'équilibre du jeu dans lequel n entreprises oligopolistiques choisissent simultanément leurs stratégies de R&D, leurs niveaux de production et la localisation de leurs implantations. On a montré que, en cas de politiques fiscales internationales asymétriques, en position d'équilibre, les entreprises formaient trois groupes, le premier qui décide d'innover, le deuxième qui imite le premier et un troisième groupe qui préfère déplacer ses unités productives à l'étranger. Dans cet article, nous souhaitons évaluer l'effet produit sur les stratégies d'équilibre par des changements dans le cadre des politiques industrielles, commerciales et environnementales. En particulier, la taille des trois groupes est modifiée par les politiques ci-dessus qui peuvent par conséquent être utilisées pour changer la distribution géographique des entreprises et leur degré d'innovation technologique.
[eng] In a previous paper (Carraro and Soubeyran, 1995), the equilibrium of the game in which n oligopolistic firms simultaneously choose their R&D strategies, output levels and plants location, was derived. It was shown that, in the presence of asymmetric international tax policies, at the equilibrium firms may form three groups, one which decides to innovate, a second one which imitates and a third group which prefers to relocate plants abroad. In this paper, we want to assess the effect on the equilibrium strategies of changes in industrial, trade and environmental policies. In particular, the size of the three groups is modified by the above policies which can therefore be used to change the geographic distribution of firms in the industry and their degree of technological innovation.