Competition and efficiency in congested markets

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Acemoglu, Daron; Ozdaglar, Asuman
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: MATHEMATICS OF OPERATIONS RESEARCH
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0364-765X
• DOI: 10.1287/moor.1060.0231
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 1-31
• 关键词: equilibrium; price; EXISTENCE; bertrand; models; games

摘要

We study the efficiency of oligopoly equilibria (OE) in congested markets. The motivating examples are the allocation of network flows in a communication network or of traffic in a transportation network. We show that increasing competition among oligopolists can reduce efficiency, measured as the difference between users' willingness to pay and delay costs. We characterize a tight bound of 5/6 on efficiency in pure strategy equilibria when there is zero latency at zero flow and a tight bound of 2 root 2-2 with positive latency at zero flow. These bounds are tight even when the numbers of routes and oligopolists are arbitrarily large.