Foreword

The present eBook series edited and managed by Dr. Ohnishi, offers new challenges to Industrial Organization (IO) economists since it delivers advance game-theoretical works to many on-going IO issues. In this book, it covers many topics that students and young researchers need to learn in an IO course. It not only reviews the classic Cournot and Bertrand models, but also provides further elaborations of many important issues including merger paradox, subcontracting systems, market entry deterrence, the choices of competition modes. Besides, the mixed oligopoly literature are extended for tackling the issues of consistent conjectural variations equilibrium with labor input function, wage-rise contract, lifetime employment, and quantity pre-commitment. A collection of books without connecting with empirical studies would be lost the ground of supported by industrial reality, and the readers could find three empirical works taking into consideration of different industries of Japan, Italy and India.

In this particular volume, a nice job is done of bridging pure economic theories with Industry-level empirical works. Moreover, authors that joined this volume have done a great deal of work on IO issues which will be useful for the researchers working on the areas of international trade, labor economics and environmental economics.