Monopolistic and Oligopolistic Imperfect Demand Competition

The traditional literature on imperfect competition concentrates on suppliers competing aboutdemanders who have preferences for certain suppliers. One could say that, by the preferences of demanders, every supplier may act like a monopolist within certain limits - the limits being dueto the fact that the products offered by suppliers are, in demanders’ opinion, narrow substitutes. Every supplier sells one specific variant of the product, which is determined by demanders’ preferences. There is, thus, product differentiation on the supply side of the market, and there are, on the rule, different profit maximizing prices set by suppliers for the specific but similar variants of the product. This description applies to the models of many suppliers’“monopolistic competition” by Chamberlin (dy1965), of“imperfectcompetition” by Robinson (1933) and of“polypolistic competition” by Gutenberg (1979) as well as to models of a few suppliers’ heterogenous oligopolistic competitionin the tradition of Launhardt (1885) and Hotelling (1929). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.