This paper shows that some of the main policy implications in Park (2001) and Zhou, Spencer, and Vertinsky (2002) are sensitive to their assumptions on marginal production costs. The unilaterally optimal policy for investment towards quality improvement is analyzed, assuming constant and non‐negative marginal production costs under vertically differentiated international duopoly. If marginal production costs are different across firms, the optimal policy for each exporting country may be opposite in its sign from that shown by the existing papers under Bertrand competition. The policy reversal may also occur for the low‐quality exporting country under Cournot competition.
We consider the efficiency of price and quantity competition in a network products market, where we observe product compatibility with network externalities (hereafter, network compatibility effects). In particular, if network compatibility effects between firms are sufficiently asymmetric, the Cournot equilibrium is more efficient than the Bertrand equilibrium in terms of larger consumer, producer and total surpluses. Then, we consider an endogenous choice of the strategic variables, price and quantity. If the degree of network compatibility effects of the rival firm is larger (smaller) than the degree of product substitutability, then choosing prices (quantities) is a dominant strategy for the firm. Thus, if the network compatibility effects of both firms are larger (smaller), the Bertrand (Cournot) equilibrium arises. Furthermore, if the network compatibility effects between the firms are sufficiently asymmetric, the firm with a larger (smaller) network compatibility effect than a certain level of product substitutability chooses quantities (prices). In this case, the Cournot–Bertrand equilibrium arises, which is less (more) efficient than the Cournot equilibrium in terms of consumer (producer) surplus.
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