Justin Wan
Numerical Method for Dynamic Bertrand Oligopoly Using Multigrid

200 University Ave West
Waterloo
ON
Canada
jwlwan@uwaterloo.ca
Swathi Amarala

In economics, oligopoly is a market structure in which a small number of firms producing substitutable goods compete by setting prices strategically in an uncertain demand environment (Bertrand model). For instance, Pepsi and Coca-Cola in the soft drink industry, Apple and Samsung in the smart phone industry. Firms choose prices to maximize profit in the sense of Nash Equilibrium. The Bertrand Oligopoly can be modelled as nonzero sum differential games. The model can be solved by the dynamic programming principle, which yields a system of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations. More precisely, let $ V_i$ be the value functions, which represent the expected discount lifetime profit. Then for the special case where there are only two players (duopoly), the unknowns $ V_i$ satisfy:

$\displaystyle \frac{\partial V_i}{\partial t} = LV_i - D_M(p_j)
\frac{\partial ...
... results will
be presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the method.
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mario 2015-02-01