SECTION: Humanities
SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION:
National Research University Higher School of Economics
REPORT FORM:
«Oral report»
AUTHOR(S)
OF THE REPORT:
Maxim Goryunov, Sergey Kokovin, Takatoshi Tabuchi
SPEAKER:
Sergey Kokovin
REPORT TITLE:
Models of Spatial Competition
TALKING POINTS:

We develop a monopolistic competition model that includes product differentiation among brands and product characteristics localized for heterogenous consumers a la Hotelling or Salop. However, the zones of service between neighbor producers can intersect. Under unspecified preferences, we show that usual monopolistic competition outcomes turn out robust to such important modification of preferences/competition: mass of firms, prices and outputs react to market size standartly. We find new effects: (1) the range of service is changing with population and distance cost; (2) agglomeration of firms occur without any reason except the competition forces, which can be one of possible explanations for shopping molls or product standardization among the competitors.