Ensuring Quality Provision through Capacity Regulation under Price Competition

Abstract

We show in a simple duopoly model of vertical differentiation that when a welfare maximizing regulator wishes to ensure entry while avoiding strategic quality underprovision, regulating the incumbent's capacity is preferable to imposing a "Minimum Quality Standard" on products. In order to establish this result, we make an original contribution to the study of Bertrand-Edgeworth competition in a market with differentiated products