On June 1-2, 2017, NES have hosted Oligo Workshop 2017

It is was an intense international conference, with 25 papers presented, without parallel sessions and with each paper followed by assigned discussion and questions. As the name of the conference suggests most papers were centered around imperfect competition in markets. Yet, there was a significant variety to satisfy every taste: from theoretical game theory (continuous time fictitious play and existence of equilibrium with discontinuous payoffs), experiments (showing that people fail to process implications of correlated information), competition with spies to practical implication of sharing ships agreements. Prof. Jacques Thisse delivered a lovely and educational lecture on the history and future of monopolistic competition models. NES CSDSI Managing Director Professor Sergei Izmalkov and research fellow Dr. Alexander Shapoval presented their research.

NES CSDSI senior research fellow Alexander Shapoval about the workshop:

“A brainstorm of participants was helpful especially for young researchers who present their work at an early stage and got feedback from experienced scholars with an international reputation. Listeners were excited to know that industrial espionage complements market research performed by firms in such a way that the whole industry can benefit from spying.

Even sports events were not avoided. The participants followed the talk that explained why group stage competitions in football, volleyball, rugby, and other games are not fair and give an advantage to teams that play first.”