Premium
COMPETITION CAN HARM CONSUMERS *
Author(s) -
COWAN SIMON,
YIN XIANGKANG
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
australian economic papers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1467-8454
pISSN - 0004-900X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8454.2008.00347.x
Subject(s) - duopoly , monopoly , competition (biology) , economics , economic surplus , harm , microeconomics , industrial organization , business , cournot competition , market economy , welfare , ecology , political science , law , biology
Duopolists selling differentiated products can generate less consumer surplus than a monopoly selling one of the products. In a Hotelling‐type model where a monopoly supplies more than half of potential consumers, but not all, entry by a rival leads to a duopoly price that is higher than the monopoly price. Consumers in aggregate will be made worse off by such entry when the effect of the price increase outweighs the benefit of extra variety. When consumers have continuous demand functions and firms use two‐part tariffs, duopoly can also result in lower aggregate consumer surplus than monopoly.