IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/95104.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Income Distribution, Vertical Differentiation, and the Quantity Competition

Author

Listed:
  • Miao, Zhuang

Abstract

The paper analyzes the effects of the change of the income distribution on the equilibrium outcomes in the duopoly-quality model with quantity competition. The analysis results show that with zero quality-cost and an income inequality not too high, then both firms always choose the highest quality level. If the quality-cost is convex, then the average quality level will decrease and the vertical differentiation level will increase in the income inequality. These results are different from the Yurko (2011), who made a similar analysis under the quality-price competition model. Another contribution of the paper is that it gives the sufficient conditions for the single firm to choose multiple levels of the quality, i.e. the quality-cost function is convex, vertical differentiation is large enough, and the marginal cost is not too high.

Suggested Citation

  • Miao, Zhuang, 2019. "Income Distribution, Vertical Differentiation, and the Quantity Competition," MPRA Paper 95104, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:95104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/95104/1/MPRA_paper_95104.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frankel, David M. & Gould, Eric D., 2001. "The Retail Price of Inequality," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 219-239, March.
    2. Tullio Jappelli & Luigi Pistaferri, 2010. "Does Consumption Inequality Track Income Inequality in Italy?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 133-153, January.
    3. Motta, Massimo, 1993. "Endogenous Quality Choice: Price vs. Quantity Competition," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 113-131, June.
    4. Yurko, Anna V., 2011. "How does income inequality affect market outcomes in vertically differentiated markets?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 493-503, July.
    5. Reiko Aoki, 2003. "Effect of credible quality investment with Bertrand and Cournot competition," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 21(2), pages 653-672, March.
    6. Herguera, Inigo & Kujal, Praveen & Petrakis, Emmanuel, 2000. "Quantity restrictions and endogenous quality choice," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(8), pages 1259-1277, December.
    7. Mussa, Michael & Rosen, Sherwin, 1978. "Monopoly and product quality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 301-317, August.
    8. Dirk Krueger & Fabrizio Perri, 2006. "Does Income Inequality Lead to Consumption Inequality? Evidence and Theory -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(1), pages 163-193.
    9. Symeonidis, George, 2003. "Comparing Cournot and Bertrand equilibria in a differentiated duopoly with product R&D," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 39-55, January.
    10. Haichao Fan & Yao Amber Li & Stephen R. Yeaple, 2015. "Trade Liberalization, Quality, and Export Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1033-1051, December.
    11. Corrado Benassi & Alessandra Chirco & Caterina Colombo, 2006. "Vertical Differentiation And The Distribution Of Income," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 345-367, October.
    12. Nguyen, Xuan & Sgro, Pasquale & Nabin, Munirul, 2014. "Licensing under vertical product differentiation: Price vs. quantity competition," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 600-606.
    13. Jaskold Gabszewicz, J. & Thisse, J. -F., 1979. "Price competition, quality and income disparities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 340-359, June.
    14. Wauthy, Xavier, 1996. "Quality Choice in Models of Vertical Differentiation," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(3), pages 345-353, September.
    15. Andaluz, Joaquín, 2010. "Cartel sustainability with vertical product differentiation: Price versus quantity competition," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 201-211, December.
    16. Avinash Dixit, 1979. "Quality and Quantity Competition," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(4), pages 587-599.
    17. Crawford, Gregory S & Shum, Matthew, 2007. "Monopoly Quality Degradation and Regulation in Cable Television," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50(1), pages 181-219, February.
    18. Nirvikar Singh & Xavier Vives, 1984. "Price and Quantity Competition in a Differentiated Duopoly," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(4), pages 546-554, Winter.
    19. Garella, Paolo G. & Lambertini, Luca, 1999. "Good vs. bad characteristics in vertical differentiation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 245-248, November.
    20. Frascatore Mark R., 2002. "On Vertical Differentiation Under Bertrand and Cournot: When Input Quality has Upward Sloping Supply," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-15, May.
    21. Hackner, Jonas, 2000. "A Note on Price and Quantity Competition in Differentiated Oligopolies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 233-239, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ngo Van Long & Zhuang Miao, 2020. "Multiple‐quality Cournot oligopoly and the role of market size," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 932-952, October.
    2. Onur A. Koska, 2020. "Sourcing product quality for foreign market entry," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 156(3), pages 669-702, August.
    3. Miao, Zhuang & Li, Yifan & Duan, Sisong, 2020. "Income inequality of destination countries and trade patterns: Evidence from Chinese firm-level data," MPRA Paper 99441, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Yurko, Anna V., 2011. "How does income inequality affect market outcomes in vertically differentiated markets?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 493-503, July.
    5. Corrado Benassi & Alessandra Chirco & Caterina Colombo, 2019. "Vertical differentiation beyond the uniform distribution," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 126(3), pages 221-248, April.
    6. Nguyen, Xuan, 2015. "On the efficiency of private and state-owned enterprises in mixed markets," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 130-137.
    7. Ya‐chin Wang & Leonard F.s. Wang, 2009. "Equivalence Of Competition Mode In A Vertically Differentiated Duopoly With Delegation," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 77(4), pages 577-590, December.
    8. Joaquín Andaluz & Gloria Jarne, 2016. "Stability of vertically differentiated Cournot and Bertrand-type models when firms are boundedly rational," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 238(1), pages 1-25, March.
    9. Jinji, Naoto & Toshimitsu, Tsuyoshi, 2013. "Strategic R&D policy in a quality-differentiated industry with three exporting countries," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 132-142.
    10. Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2015. "On the Cournot–Bertrand Profit Differential and the Structure of Unionisation in a Managerial Duopoly," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 266-287, December.
    11. Garella, Paolo G. & Lambertini, Luca, 2014. "Bidimensional vertical differentiation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 1-10.
    12. Luciano Fanti & Luca Gori, 2013. "Stability Analysis in a Bertrand Duopoly with Different Product Quality and Heterogeneous Expectations," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 481-501, December.
    13. Pires, Cesaltina Pacheco & Catalão-Lopes, Margarida & Jorge, Sílvia Ferreira & Garcês, Pedro, 2024. "Quality-price choices and market configurations when location matters," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    14. Alventosa, Adriana & Pacheco Pires, Cesaltina & Ferreira Jorge, Sílvia & Pinho, Joana & Catalão-Lopes, Margarida, 2023. "How does firms’ cost structure affect their quality–price mix? An experimental analysis," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    15. Naoto Jinji, 2003. "Strategic policy for product R&D with symmetric costs," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(4), pages 993-1006, November.
    16. C. Benassi & A. Chirco & C. Colombo, 2015. "Beyond the Uniform Distribution: Equilibrium Prices and Qualities in a Vertically Differentiated Duopoly," Working Papers wp1044, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    17. John Gilbert & Onur A. Koska & Reza Oladi, 2020. "Product Quality and Strategic Asymmetry in International Trade," Working Papers in Economics 20/05, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    18. Lutz, Stefan H., 2002. "The Effects of Quotas on Vertical Intra-Industry Trade," ZEW Discussion Papers 02-61, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    19. Brekke, Kurt R. & Siciliani, Luigi & Straume, Odd Rune, 2010. "Price and quality in spatial competition," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 471-480, November.
    20. Tanmoyee Chatterjee & Ajitava Raychaudhuri, 2004. "Product Quality, Income Inequality And Market Structure," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 29(1), pages 51-84, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Quality; Price; Vertical Differentiation; Cournot Competition; Income Distribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

    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:pra:mprapa:95104. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.