Time-Dependent Variational Inequality for an Oligopolistic Market Equilibrium Problem with Production and Demand Excesses

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the variational formulation of the oligopolistic market equilibrium problem in presence of both production and demand excesses. In particular, we generalize a previous model in which the authors, instead, considered only the problem with production excesses, by allowing also the presence of demand excesses. First we examine the equilibrium conditions in terms of the well-known dynamic Cournot-Nash principle. Next, the equilibrium conditions will be expressed in terms of Lagrange multipliers by means of the infinite dimensional duality theory. Then, we show the equivalence between the two conditions that are both expressed by an appropriate evolutionary variational inequality. Moreover, thanks to the variational formulation, some existence and regularity results for equilibrium solutions are proved. At last, a numerical example, which illustrates the features of the problem, is provided.