期刊名称：Discussion Paper / Département des Sciences Économiques de l'Université Catholique de Louvain
印刷版ISSN：1379-244X
出版年度：2003
卷号：1
出版社：Université catholique de Louvain
摘要：We study how asymmetric information impinge on oligopolistic firms’ decision between direct investment and exports in a game-theoretic model with Bayesian learning. Host firms have superior information about market demand and foreign firms can improve their knowledge if foreign direct investment (FDI) is undertaken. In addition to the well-known tension between the fixed set-up costs of investment, the additional variable costs of exports and oligopoly sizes, the incentive to invest abroad is explained by the strategic learning effect. FDI may be observed even if foreign firms are pessimistic or trade costs are zero. Interestingly, compared with the certainty equivalent, the equilibrium number of investors is larger when foreign firms hold optimistic beliefs or, if these are pessimistic, when the strategic learning effect outweighs the conjecture effect.
关键词：Asymmetric information; Bayesian learning; FDI; international oligopoly
