رهبری قیمت درون زا

We consider a linear price setting duopoly game with differentiated products and determine endogenously which of the players will lead and which one will follow. While the follower role is most attractive for each firm, we show that waiting is more risky for the low cost firm so that, consequently, risk dominance considerations, as in Harsanyi and Selten (A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1988), allow the conclusion that only the high cost firm will choose to wait. Hence, the low cost firm will emerge as the endogenous price leader.

Standard game theoretic models of oligopoly situations impose the order of the moves exogenously, an assumption that was already criticized by Von Stackelberg (1934), well before game theory invaded the field of industrial organization. Von Stackelberg pointed out that players have preferences over which role (leader or follower) to play in the game and he argued that a stable equilibrium would result only if the actual role assignment would be consistent with these preferences. As Von Stackelberg argued, in many situations both duopolists prefer the same role so that a stable situation does not appear to exist