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Glossary of game theory terms.

Cournot, Antoine Augustin

Antoine Augustin Cournot
Nineteenth century French economist credited with the introduction of the theory of profit maximizing producers. In his masterpiece, The Recherches, published in 1838, Cournot presented his concept of monopoly, oligopoly, and perfect competition. In demonstrating the equilibrium of his oligopoly game, Cournot introduced a form of best-reply dynamics, in which each firm selects the quantity that maximizes its profit in response to the total industry output of the previous period.

updated: 12 August 2005
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