The paper analyzes the effects of informational asymmetries on the market structure of the banking industry in a multi-period model of spatial competition. All lenders face uncertainty with regard to borrowers’ creditworthiness, but, in the process of lending, incumbent banks gather proprietary information about their clients, acquiring an advantage over potential entrants. These informational asymmetries are an important determinant of the industry structure and may represent a barrier to entry for new banks. The paper shows that, in contrast with traditional models of horizontal differentiation, the steady-state equilibrium is characterized by a finite number of banks even in the absence of fixed costs.

Economic Theory, Econometrics, and Mathematical Economics: A Series of Monographs and Textbooks: Noncooperative Approaches to the Theory of Perfect Competition focuses on the application of noncooperative approaches to the theory of perfect competition, including Cournot game, no-surplus condition, and Nash equilibria. The selection first elaborates on collusive behavior in noncooperative epsilon-equilibria of oligopolies with long but finite lives and noncooperative price taking in large dynamic markets. Discussions focus on noncooperative equilibria which support the monopoly allocation, alternative definition of perfect epsilon-equilibrium, one-period Cournot game, fixed-demand case, and replication case. The book takes a look at noncooperative price taking in large dynamic markets, no-surplus condition as a characterization of perfectly competitive equilibrium, perfect competition, profit criterion, and the organization of economic activity. Topics include profits to individually improving welfare, structure of firms, competitive allocations as no surplus allocations, profits as rents, Walrasian and perfectly competitive equilibrium, and no-surplus and core equivalence as alternative characterizations of perfectly competitive equilibrium. The manuscript ponders on Nash equilibria of market games and efficiency properties of strategic market games, as well as commodities, agents, assignments, strategic markets games, proper and full Cournot-Nash equilibria, and finiteness and inefficiency. The selection is a valuable source of data for researchers interested in noncooperative approaches to the theory of perfect competition.

Space is a crucial variable in any economic activity. Spatial Economics is the branch of economics that explicitly aims to incorporate the space dimension in the analysis of economic phenomena. From its beginning in the last century, Spatial Economics has contributed to the understanding of the economy by developing plenty of theoretical models as well as econometric techniques having the “space” as a core dimension of the analysis. This edited volume addresses the complex issue of Spatial Economics from a theoretical point of view. This volume is part of a more complex project including another edited volume (Spatial Economics Volume II: Applications) collecting original papers which address Spatial Economics from an applied perspective.

A theoretical and unified explanation of how prices are determined in practice, written in a non-technical way.

Over more than two centuries the developmentofeconomic theory has created a wide array of different concepts, theories, and insights. My recent books, Capital and Knowledge (Zhang, 1999) and A TheoryofInternational Trade (Zhang, 2000) show how separate economic theories such as the Marxian economics, the Keynesian economics, the general equilibrium theory, the neoclassical growth theory, and the neoclassical trade theory can be examined within a single theoretical framework. This book isto further expand the frameworkproposed in the previous studies. This book is a part of my economic theory with endogenous population, capital, knowledge, preferences, sexual division of labor and consumption, institutions, economic structures and exchange values over time and space (Zhang, 1996a). As an extension of the Capital and Knowledge, which is focused on the dynamics of national economies, this book is to construct a theory of urban economies. We are concerned with dynamic relations between division of labor, division ofconsumption and determination of prices structure over space. We examine dynamic interdependence between capital accumulation, knowledge creation and utilization, economicgrowth, price structuresand urban pattern formation under free competition. The theory is constructed on the basisofa few concepts within a compact framework. The comparative advantage of our theory is that in providing rich insights into complex of spatial economies it uses only a few concepts and simplified functional forms and accepts a few assumptions about behavior of consumers, producers, and institutionalstructures.