Monopolistic Competition in Two-Sector Economy under Demand Uncertainty

The article deals with the theory of monopolistic competition under demand uncertainty. The authors consider the economy with labor immobility consisting of the high-tech sector with monopolistic competition and the standard sector with perfect competition. Preferences between sectors are specified...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Alexander Borisovich Shapoval, Vasiliy Mikhailovich Goncharenko
Format: Article
Language:Russian
Published: Economic Research Institute of the Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 2014-06-01
Series:Prostranstvennaâ Èkonomika
Subjects:
Online Access:http://spatial-economics.com/eng/images/spatial-econimics/3_2014/SE.2014.3.012-025.Shapoval.pdf
Description
Summary:The article deals with the theory of monopolistic competition under demand uncertainty. The authors consider the economy with labor immobility consisting of the high-tech sector with monopolistic competition and the standard sector with perfect competition. Preferences between sectors are specified by the Cobb - Douglas production function. It is assumed that companies make output decisions under preferences uncertainty and consumers’ distribution by sectors will be known by the time of realization. It means that firms are informed about consumer demand with accuracy up to a multiplicative uncertainty which is generated by random parameters in the Cobb - Douglas production function. The paper shows that demand uncertainty leads to consistent growth of prices and wages in high-tech sector in relation to salaries in the second sector. The impact of uncertainty on welfare is ambiguous. In particular, under the known expected value of uncertainty customers derive benefit from exaggerated companies’ expectations about clients’ desire to consume high-tech goods
ISSN:1815-9834
2587-5957