{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,17]],"date-time":"2025-10-17T14:30:14Z","timestamp":1760711414372,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":15,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,8,19]],"date-time":"2024-08-19T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1724025600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Games"],"abstract":"<jats:p>This paper extends the Cournot duopoly model by allowing the government to impose firm-dependent specific taxes or subsidies while keeping the budget balanced. It considers two possible government goals: maximizing the social surplus and maximizing the consumer surplus. It shows that, with identical firms, the best government policy is not to intervene. In the case of cost asymmetry, social surplus and consumer surplus maximization goals require opposite strategies: to maximize the social surplus, the government should tax the high-cost firm driving the economy toward monopoly and increasing productive efficiency at the expense of lower production. In the case of consumer surplus maximization, the tax should be imposed on the low-cost firm reducing the gap between the firms\u2019 outputs. Such a strategy, however, increases productive inefficiency and reduces the social surplus.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/g15040029","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,8,19]],"date-time":"2024-08-19T06:41:31Z","timestamp":1724049691000},"page":"29","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Cournot Duopoly with Cost Asymmetry and Balanced Budget Specific Taxes and Subsidies"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"15","author":[{"given":"Olivia","family":"Kay","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Mathematics Department, Ashbury College, Ottawa, ON K1M 0T3, Canada"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,8,19]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Daughety, A. (2008). Cournot competition. The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Palgrave Macmillan.","DOI":"10.1057\/978-1-349-95121-5_2345-1"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"385","DOI":"10.1016\/S0167-7187(88)80019-5","article-title":"Indirect taxation and Cournot equilibrium","volume":"6","author":"Dierickx","year":"1988","journal-title":"Int. J. Ind. Organ."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5","DOI":"10.1016\/0165-1765(85)90091-6","article-title":"Two remarks on Cournot Equilibria","volume":"19","author":"Bergstrom","year":"1985","journal-title":"Econ. Lett."},{"key":"ref_4","unstructured":"Pittman, R. (2024, July 12). 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Policy"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"268","DOI":"10.1111\/1468-5876.00151","article-title":"Welfare effects of commodity taxation in Cournot Oligopoly","volume":"51","author":"Ushio","year":"2000","journal-title":"Jpn. Econ. Rev."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"738","DOI":"10.1111\/jpet.12373","article-title":"Taxation under oligopoly in a general equilibrium setting","volume":"21","author":"Collie","year":"2019","journal-title":"J. Public Econ. Theory"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"110352","DOI":"10.1016\/j.econlet.2022.110352","article-title":"Tax incidence in oligopolistic markets","volume":"213","author":"Herzing","year":"2022","journal-title":"Econ. Lett."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"415","DOI":"10.1002\/mde.3110","article-title":"Indirect taxation with Shadow Cost of public funds in mixed oligopoly","volume":"41","author":"Zhang","year":"2020","journal-title":"Manag. Decis. Econ."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"101034","DOI":"10.1016\/j.najef.2019.101034","article-title":"Indirect taxation and consumer welfare in an asymmetric Stackelberg oligopoly","volume":"50","author":"Wang","year":"2019","journal-title":"N. Am. J. Econ. Financ."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"933","DOI":"10.2307\/135830","article-title":"Optimal taxation and heterogeneous oligopoly","volume":"26","author":"Dung","year":"1993","journal-title":"Can. J. 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