From Bertrand to Cournot via Kreps and Scheinkman: a hazardous journey

摘要

The mininal core of strategic decisions a firm has to make is three-fold: What to produce? At which scale? At what price? A full-fledged theory of oligopolistic competition should be able to embrace these three dimensions jointly. Starting from the Cournot-Bertrand dispute and the stream of research it gave birth to, this survey shows that we are far from having such a theory at our disposal today. Many papers cover two dimensions out of three and display insightful results but no paper satisfactorily addresses the complete picture. I discuss the limitations of the different approaches that have been undertaken. This discussion sets a clear agenda for further theoretical research on the oligopoly front.