Dynamic Cournot Oligopoly Models of the State Promotion of Innovative Electronic Courses in Universities

Abstract

We built and investigated a two-level dynamic game theoretic model of control of the state promotion of innovative electronic courses in universities based on Cournot oligopoly. A federal state is the Principal, and universities competing a la Cournot are agents. The agents invest in the development of new electronic educative courses that is considered as their innovative investments. The Principal gives subsidies to the agents for the promotion of innovations. The agents play a dynamic game in normal form that results in a Nash equilibrium, and the Principal solves an inverse Stackelberg game (a Germeier game of the type Γ2t). We investigated different types of strategies: (1) uniform strategies for all agents; (2) type-dependent (agent efficiency-dependent) strategies; (3) action-dependent strategies. For a specific form of the model functions we found a solution in explicit form, and in the general case we used a method of qualitatively representative scenarios in simulation modeling. We analyzed the results by means of the individual and collective relative efficiency indices.