Preface

Summary

Fifty years ago, in an address to the Cournot Memorial session of the Econometric society, A. J. Nichol observed that if ever there was an apt illustration of Carnegie's dictum that “It does not pay to pioneer,” then Cournot's life and work would be it. His work was essentially ignored (especially by his countrymen) for many years. What survives in most economists' minds today is Cournot's model of duopoly. And this, too, if one consults the treatment in most current microeconomics texts, seems to linger on as an image of the past, a traditional topic for inclusion in a chapter on imperfect competition, sandwiched somewhere between monopoly and the bibliography, or neatly tucked away as an example of an application of game theory. So why dust off this musty topic now?

A peek at the extended bibliography and the papers in this volume should make the reason for reconsidering Cournot clear: There has been a veritable explosion of Cournot-based models of strategic behavior over the last two decades, and the end is not in sight. In recognition of this, this volume is a celebration of the publication of Augustin Cournot's model of noncooperative behavior and an examination of its relevance and importance to economic theory and analysis 150 years after its first appearance. The introduction examines the Cournot model and its relationship to many of the classical and recent analyses of market behavior.