Exploration of Complex Dynamics for Cournot Oligopoly Game with Differentiated Products

Abstract

This paper proposes a Cournot game organized by three competing firms adopting bounded rationality. According to the marginal profit in the past time step, each firm tries to update its production using local knowledge. In this game, a firm's preference is represented by a utility function that is derived from a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function. The game is modeled by a 3-dimensional discrete dynamical system. The equilibria of the system are numerically studied to detect their complex characteristics due to difficulty to get an explicit form for those equilibria. For the proposed utility function, some cases with different value parameters are considered. Numerical simulations are used to provide an experimental evidence for the complex behavior of the evolution of the system. The obtained results show that the system loses its stability due to different types of bifurcations.