Profitable strategic delegation with conjectural variations

[EN] Firms delegate strategic decisions to managers because they find it profitable to do so. In the product market, when agents make conjectures about the reaction of their rivals to marginal changes in their own strategies, the set of equilibriums can be enlarged with respect to the case of no con...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ciarreta Antuñano, Aitor, García Enríquez, Javier
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universidad del País Vasco
Repositorio:Addi. Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación
OAI Identifier:oai:addi.ehu.eus:10810/64364
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10810/64364
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Bertrand
conjectural variations
Cournot
duopoly
strategic delegation
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] Firms delegate strategic decisions to managers because they find it profitable to do so. In the product market, when agents make conjectures about the reaction of their rivals to marginal changes in their own strategies, the set of equilibriums can be enlarged with respect to the case of no conjectures. This paper takes a duopolistic linear market parameterization where firms selling differentiated products can delegate either price or output decisions to managers. We show that it is a dominant strategy for firms to delegate no matter whether firms are Cournot or Bertrand competitors, although the equilibrium is not necessarily efficient. Futhermore, in equilibrium Cournot competition is more profitable for firms than Bertrand competition. Finally, requiring consistency in conjectures yields the same outcome no matter what type of strategic interaction and managerial choice there is on the part of firms.