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The spatial voting approach is extended to account for the existence of a loyalty effect driving the choice of parties' platforms during elections. There emerges a non-linear relationship between these variable, whereby a party sticking to its historical heritage may lose to a rival more keen to approach the position of the median voter, whose pivotal role is also investigated.

I use a strategic setup to investigate whether unipolarism can indeed persist as a long run equilibrium. In a three-country world, a global power may subsidise two satellites so as to incentivate them not to invest to build up a coalition against it. I single out the conditions under which the one-shot game is a Prisoners' Dilemma where no subsidy is paid and the coalition arises at equilibrium. Then, I revert to the infinitely repeated game and apply the Perfect Folk Theorem to characterise the critical thresholds of discount factor sustaining unipolarism at the subgame perfect equilibrium.

I investigate a dynamic oligopoly game where firms enter simultaneously but compete hierarchically `a la Stackelberg at each instant over time. They accumulate capacity through costly investment, with capital acumulation dynamics being affected by an additive shock the mean and variance of which are known. The main findings are the following. First, the Stackelberg game is uncontrollable by the leader; hence, it is time consistent. Second, the leaders invest more than the followers; as a result, in steady state, the leaders' capacity and profits are larger than the followers'. Therefore, the present analysis does not confirm Gibrat's Law, since the individual growth rate is determined by the timing of moves.

I investigate R&D efforts for process innovation in a monopoly with uncertain demand. Two different models are proposed, where either (i) the reservation price is affected by an additive shock and the marginal production cost is increasing, or (ii) a multiplicative shock on the slope of demand combines with a flat marginal production cost. In either case, price-setting behaviour generates a larger R&D investment than quantity-setting behaviour. An Arrowian interpretation of the first result and a Schumpeterian interpretation of the second are proposed.

This paper describes R&D competition between a managerial firm and an entrepreneurial one, in a Cournot market. It is shown that a manager interested in output expansion exerts higher R&D efforts, yielding productive efficiency as compared to the performance of a strictly profit-seeking firm. This may ultimately yield monopoly power for the managerial firm, if technological spillovers in the industry are low enough.

This paper shows that market integration has controversial effects when countries are not similar in terms of income but may significantrìly differ in terms of consumer tastes and the cost of labour. The long run adjustments observed in the specialization of production (or product differentiation) and prices interact in non trivial ways with labour mobility (and the associated adjustment in the wage differential) to determine the relative performance of rirms (as for equilibrium profits) and countries (as for equilibrium social welfare). It iis shown that there are interesting cases where the welfare enjoyed by the larger country is smaller than the smaller counties', due to relative distribution of demand and labour.

I propose a dynamic duopoly model where firms enter simultaneously but compete hierarchically à la Stackelberg at each instant over time. They accumulate capacity through costly investment, as in Solow's (1956) growth model.The leader invests more than the followersò as a result, in steady state the leader's capacity and profits are larger than the follower`s Therefore, the present analysis does not confirm Gibrat`s Law, since the individual growth rate is determined by the timing of moves.

I characterise R&D investment in product innovation of a profit-seeking monopolist versus that of a social planner in a spatial market, under either partial or full market coverage. Under partial coverage, the steady state product design is the outcome of the tradeoff between the incentive to locate as close as possible to the middle of the preference space, and the incentive to save upon R&D costs. The planner does not produce the variety preferred by the average consumer, in situations where the R&D investment is too costly. This result is reinforced under full market coverage, where the planner's incentive to innovate is always weaker than the monopolist's, and the planner produces the average (and median) consumer's preferred variety if and only if the rental price of capital is nil.

I characterise the dynamics of capacity accumulation and investment in advertising in a spatial monopoly model, contrasting the socially optimal behavior of a benevolent planner against the behaviour of a profit-maximising monopolist. I show that, in steady state, the monopolist always distorts both kinds of investment as compared to the social optimum, except in a situation where the Ramsey equilibrium prevails under both regimes.

I nanlyse two differential games describing electoral campaigns where two candidates invest so as to increase the number of their respective voters.In both cases, parties overinvest and the number of voters is larger than in the social optimum. I extended both models to n candidates, so as to derive the socially optimal number of candidates. This yields non-univocal results, in that the number of candidates maximizing social welfare when a benevolent planner controls their efforts may be higher or lower than the optimal number of candidates given the non-cooperative investment behavior of parties, according to the shape of cost functions and he dynamic behavior of consensus associated with investment.

I analyse a differential game where firms, through capital accumulation over time, supply vertically differentiated goods. This proves that several results obtained by the static approach are not robust. I show that (i) the sustainability of the duopoly regime is conditional upon the level of firms' R&D investments; (ii) there are quality ranges where the low quality firm invests more than the high quality firm; (ii) there are quality ranges where the low quality firm's profits are larger than the high quality firm's.

What shape can we expect market competition to exhibit? This question is addressed in the present paper. Firms are allowed to choose whether to act as quantity or price setters, whether to move early or delay as long as possible at the market stage, and whether to be entrepreneurial or managerial. Moreover, firms can endogenously determine the sequence of such decisions. It is shown that in correspondence of the (unique) subgame perfect equilibrium of the game, all firms first decide to delay, then to act as Cournot competitors, and finally stockholders decide to delegate control to managers. Hence, sequential play between either managerial or entrepreneurial firms, as well as simultaneous play between entrepreneurial firms, are ruled out.

What shape can we expect market competition to exhibit? This question is addressed in the present paper. Firms are allowed to choose whether to act as quantity or price setters, whether to move early or delay as long as possible at the market stage, & whether to be entrepreneurial or managerial. Moreover, firms can endogenously determine the sequence of such decisions. It is shown that in correspondence of the (unique) subgame perfect equilibrium of the game, all firms first decide to delay, then to act as Cournot competitors, & finally stockholders decide to delegate control to managers. Hence, sequential play between either managerial or entrepreneurial firms, as well as simultaneous play between entrepreneurial firms, are ruled out. 1 Figure, 40 References. Adapted from the source document.

I investigate a spatial duopoly model with linear transportation costs as a differential game where product differentiation is the result of firms' R&D investments. Two related results obtain, i.e., (i) the steady state R&D investment (product differentiation) is negatively (positively) related to the cost of capital and time discounting; and (ii) if time discounting and the cost of capital are suficiently high, the amount of differentiation observed in steady state is suficiently large to ensure the existence of a unique pure-strategy price equilibrium with prices above marginal cost.

The monopolist's incentives towards product and process innovations are evaluated against the social optimum. The main findings are that (i) the incentive to invest in cost-reducing R&D is inversely related to the number of varieties being supplied at equilibrium, under both regimes; (ii) distortions obtain under monopoly, w.r.t. both the number of varieties and the technology. With substitutes (respectively, complements), the monopolist's product range is smaller (respectively, larger) than under social planning. For any given number of goods, the monopolist operates at a higher marginal cost than the planner does.