On Price Taking Behavior in a Non-renewable Resource Cartel-Fringe Game

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

Hassan Benchekroun (McGill) and Cees Withagen (VU University Amsterdam) provide thoughts On Price Taking Behaviour in a Non-renewable Resource Cartel-Fringe Game

ABSTRACT: We consider a nonrenewable resource game with one cartel and a set of fringe members. We show that (i) the outcomes of the closed-loop and the open-loop nonrenewable resource game with the fringe members as price takers (the cartel- fringe game a la Salant 1976) coincide and (ii) when the number of fringe firms be- comes arbitrarily large, the equilibrium outcome of the closed-loop Nash game does not coincide with the equilibrium outcome of the closed-loop cartel-fringe game. Thus, the outcome of the cartel-fringe open-loop equilibrium can be supported as an outcome of a subgame perfect equilibrium. However the interpretation of the cartel-fringe model, where from the outset the fringe is assumed to be price-taker, as a limit case of an asymmetric oligopoly with the agents playing Nash-Cournot, does not extend to the case where firms can use closed-loop strategies.