Oligopoly Equilibria When Firms Have Local Knowledge of Demand

This paper investigates the existence of oligopoly equilibria when firms arrive, through local price experiments, at a correct estimation of their demand curves in a neighborhood of a given statu s quo. The author provides sufficient conditions for the existence of a local Nash equilibrium, defined as a point where each firm is at a local maximum of its profit function, given the prices charged by th e other firms. He also provides two examples, one of a duopoly with l ocal Nash equilibria but no Nash equilibria and the other of a duopol y with no local Nash equilibria. Copyright 1988 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.