Suppose that a car dealer has a local monopoly in Selling Volvos. It pays the wholesale price w to Volvo for each car that it sells, and charges each consumer the retail price p. The demand curve for the dealer in the retail market is p=60-q, where price is in units of thousands of dollars. The marginal cost of Volvo is 20.
A. Suppose that the car dealer and Volvo work separately. What would be the Nash equilibrium?
B. Find the equilibrium wholesale price and retail price: w and p. Find the equilibrium profits for the dealer and Volvo.
C. Now suppose that Volvo bought the ownership of the car dealer. For the integrated firm, what will be the optimal retail price p? Find the equilibrium total profit for the integrated firm.
D. In terms of total profit, is the separation scenario in (A) better than the integration scenario (C)? How about consumer surplus?
E. Now suppose that integration is not feasible. Design a franchise contract to achieve the same production, retail price and total profit as achieved in part (C) and (D). Moreover, please specify the shares of Volvo and the dealer, so that Volvo’s profit is twice that of the dealer, πM=2πR.