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Cournot Competition

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Abstract

Cournot’s 1838 model of strategic interaction between competing firms has become the primary workhorse for the analysis of imperfect competition, and shows up in a variety of fields, notably industrial organization and international trade. This article begins with a tour of the basic Cournot model and its properties, touching on existence, uniqueness, stability, and efficiency; this discussion especially emphasizes considerations involved in using the Cournot model in multi-stage applications. A discussion of recent applications is provided as well as a reference to an extended bibliography of approximately 125 selected publications from 2001 through 2005.

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Daughety, A.F. (2018). Cournot Competition. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2345

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