Codetermination and product differentiation

This research revisits the theoretical literature on codetermination in differentiated Cournot duopoly markets. Although codetermination is widely adopted in some north European countries, the theoretical analysis is restricted to a few number of works. The literature is led by Kraft (1998), who shows that codetermination emerges as a market outcome (sub-optimal Nash equilibrium) in a quantity-setting duopoly with homogeneous products. However, there exists evidence that codetermination is quite absent in countries where there are no specific laws. This article shows that codetermination cannot emerge as a Nash equilibrium when products are sufficiently differentiated (even when they are complementary). These results also hold by considering R&D activities.