IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nuf/econwp/0915.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Nonparametric Analysis of the Cournot Model

Author

Listed:
  • Andrés Carvajal

    (CRETA and Department of Economics, University of Warwick)

  • John Quah

    (Department of Economics, Oxford University, Oxford)

Abstract

An observer makes a number of observations of an industry producing a homoge- neous good. Each observation consists of the market price, the output of individual firms and perhaps information on each firm's production cost. We provide vari- ous tests (typically, linear programs) with which the observer can determine if the data set is consistent with the hypothesis that firms in this industry are playing a Cournot game at each observation. When cost information is wholly or partially unavailable, these tests could potentially be used to derive cost information on the firms. This paper is a contribution to the literature that aims to characterize (in various contexts) the restrictions that a data set must satisfy for it to be consis- tent with Nash outcomes in a game. It is also inspired by the seminal result of Afriat (and the subsequent literature) which addresses similar issues in the context of consumer demand, though one important technical difference from most of these results is that the objective functions of firms in a Cournot game are not necessarily quasiconcave.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrés Carvajal & John Quah, 2009. "A Nonparametric Analysis of the Cournot Model," Economics Papers 2009-W15, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:nuf:econwp:0915
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/economics/papers/2009/w15/hlp32(r).pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrés Carvajal, 2003. "Testable Restrictions of Nash Equilibrium in Games with Continuous Domains," Borradores de Economia 3555, Banco de la Republica.
    2. Forges, Françoise & Minelli, Enrico, 2009. "Afriat's theorem for general budget sets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 135-145, January.
    3. Ray, Indrajit & Zhou, Lin, 2001. "Game Theory via Revealed Preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 415-424, November.
    4. Felix Kubler, 2008. "Observable Restrictions of General Equilibrium Models with Financial Markets," Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, in: Computational Aspects of General Equilibrium Theory, pages 93-108, Springer.
    5. Robert R. Routledge, 2009. "Testable implications of the Bertrand model," Economics Discussion Paper Series 0918, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    6. Andrés Carvajal, 2010. "The testable implications of competitive equilibrium in economies with externalities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 45(1), pages 349-378, October.
    7. Donald J. Brown & Rosa L. Matzkin, 2008. "Testable Restrictions on the Equilibrium Manifold," Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, in: Computational Aspects of General Equilibrium Theory, pages 11-25, Springer.
    8. Sprumont, Yves, 2000. "On the Testable Implications of Collective Choice Theories," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 205-232, August.
    9. Carvajal, Andres, 2004. "Testable restrictions on the equilibrium manifold under random preferences," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-2), pages 121-143, February.
    10. Carvajal, Andres & Ray, Indrajit & Snyder, Susan, 2004. "Equilibrium behavior in markets and games: testable restrictions and identification," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-2), pages 1-40, February.
    11. Bresnahan, Timothy F., 1989. "Empirical studies of industries with market power," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 17, pages 1011-1057, Elsevier.
    12. Matzkin, Rosa L, 1991. "Axioms of Revealed Preference for Nonlinear Choice Sets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(6), pages 1779-1786, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cherchye, Laurens & Demuynck, Thomas & De Rock, Bram, 2011. "Testable implications of general equilibrium models: An integer programming approach," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4-5), pages 564-575.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cherchye, Laurens & Demuynck, Thomas & De Rock, Bram, 2011. "Testable implications of general equilibrium models: An integer programming approach," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4-5), pages 564-575.
    2. Carvajal, Andres & Ray, Indrajit & Snyder, Susan, 2004. "Equilibrium behavior in markets and games: testable restrictions and identification," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-2), pages 1-40, February.
    3. Andrés Carvajal, 2010. "The testable implications of competitive equilibrium in economies with externalities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 45(1), pages 349-378, October.
    4. Ennio Bilancini, 2011. "On the rationalizability of observed consumers’ choices when preferences depend on budget sets and (potentially) on anything else," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 102(3), pages 275-286, April.
    5. Carvajal, Andrés & González, Natalia, 2014. "On refutability of the Nash bargaining solution," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 177-186.
    6. Andrés Carvajal, 2003. "Testable Restrictions og General Equilibrium Theory in Exchange Economies with Externalities," Borradores de Economia 3556, Banco de la Republica.
    7. Carvajal, Andrés & Song, Xinxi, 2018. "Testing Pareto efficiency and competitive equilibrium in economies with public goods," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 19-30.
    8. Ray, Indrajit & Snyder, Susan, 2013. "Observable implications of Nash and subgame-perfect behavior in extensive games," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 471-477.
    9. Ray, Indrajit & Snyder, Susan, 2013. "Observable implications of Nash and subgame-perfect behavior in extensive games," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 471-477.
    10. Castillo, Marco E. & Cross, Philip J. & Freer, Mikhail, 2019. "Nonparametric utility theory in strategic settings: Revealing preferences and beliefs from proposal–response games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 60-82.
    11. Andrés Carvajal, 2003. "Testable Restrictions of Nash Equilibrium in Games with Continuous Domains," Borradores de Economia 229, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    12. BOSSERT, Walter & SUZUMURA, Kotaro, 2006. "Non-Deteriorating Choice without Full Transitivity," Cahiers de recherche 10-2006, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    13. Alfred Galichon & John Quah, 2013. "Symposium on revealed preference analysis," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 54(3), pages 419-423, November.
    14. Anis Hoayek & Hassan Hamie & Hans Auer, 2020. "Modeling the Price Stability and Predictability of Post Liberalized Gas Markets Using the Theory of Information," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-20, June.
    15. Walter Bossert & Yves Sprumont, 2002. "Core rationalizability in two-agent exchange economies," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 20(4), pages 777-791.
    16. Françoise Forges & Vincent Iehlé, 2013. "Essential data, budget sets and rationalization," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 54(3), pages 449-461, November.
    17. Christopher P. Chambers & Federico Echenique & Nicolas S. Lambert, 2021. "Recovering Preferences From Finite Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(4), pages 1633-1664, July.
    18. Paul Oslington, 2012. "General Equilibrium: Theory and Evidence," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(282), pages 446-448, September.
    19. Andrés Carvajal & Alvaro Riascos, 2005. "The Identification Of Preferences From Market Data Under Uncertainty," Documentos CEDE 3599, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    20. Pierre-André Chiappori & Olivier Donni, 2005. "Learning From a Piece of Pie: The Empirical Content of Nash Bargaining," THEMA Working Papers 2006-07, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    revealed preference; observable restrictions; linear programming; Cournot game; increasing marginal costs.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nuf:econwp:0915. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Maxine Collett (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/economics/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.