We argue that, in a simple setting, the relation between the intensity of competition and cost-reducing investment is U-shaped. We consider a two-stage game with cost-reducing investments followed by a linear differentiated Cournot duopoly. We first show that, except for firms that are much less...

The paper analyzes the effects of more intense competition on firms' incentives to invest in process innovations. We carry out experiments for two-stage games, where R&D investment choices are followed by product market competition. As predicted by theory, an increase in the number of firms from...

This paper studies the effects of patents and subsidies on R&D investment decisions. The theoretical framework is a two-stage game consisting of an investment and a market stage. In equilibrium, both patents and subsidies induce the same amount of R&D investment, which is higher than the...

The paper characterizes the mixed-strategy equilibria in all-pay auctions with endogenous prizes that depend positively on own effort and negatively on the effort of competitors. Such auctions arise naturally in the context of investment games, lobbying games, and promotion tournaments. We also...