Essays in technology gap and process spillovers at the firm level

Abstract

One of the most important applications of the Cournot model can be found in the a??R&Da?? branch of the industrial organization literature. By applying the logic of two stage Cournot games, Da??Aspremont and Jacquemin (1988) made a seminal contribution to the analysis of strategic R&D investment in a duopoly with spillovers. While subsequent work by Henriques (1990) and Simpson and Vonortas (1994) highlighted the importance of spillovers in R&D games, Amir, Estignev and Wooders (2003) were the first to endogenize spillovers in the underlying framework. This dissertation introduces an element of asymmetry to the structure of intra-industry spillovers by developing a class of noncooperative R&D games in which the nature of the endogenity of such spillovers turns on the level of technology gap between the two firms.