Premium
OPTIMAL PRICING AND QUALITY CHOICE WHEN INVESTMENT IN QUALITY IS IRREVERSIBLE
Author(s) -
Pennings Enrico
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
the journal of industrial economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.93
H-Index - 77
eISSN - 1467-6451
pISSN - 0022-1821
DOI - 10.1111/j.0022-1821.2004.00241.x
Subject(s) - commit , stackelberg competition , quality (philosophy) , microeconomics , economics , investment (military) , product (mathematics) , computer science , philosophy , geometry , mathematics , epistemology , database , politics , political science , law
This paper examines the price and quality choice of a single product, risk‐neutral monopolist who can delay irreversible investments required for market entry. It is shown that the price and quality she chooses at entry increase with uncertainty about the size of future demand. In a Stackelberg leader‐follower game, the leader and follower pre‐commit immediately up to a certain level of uncertainty. In this case the leader produces the higher quality good. When uncertainty is higher than this threshold, the follower will wait and enter the market later with a higher quality good.