Supervisory Control of Dynamic Oligopolistic Markets: How can Firms Reach Profit-Maximization?
Seongjin Park · Journal of Institute of Control Robotics and Systems · 2011
In an oligopolistic market, only a few firms account for most or all of total production, e.g., automobile, steel, and computer industries. For a dynamic oligopolistic market with two firms competing in quantities, we show that supervisory control theory of discrete event systems provides a novel approach to solve the dynamic oligopoly problem with the aim of maximizing the profits of both firms. Specifically, we show that the controllability, observability, and nonblocking property (which are the core concepts in supervisory control theory) are the necessary and sufficient conditions for two oligopolistic firms in disequilibrium to eventually reach equilibrium states of maximizing the profits of both firms.