ABSTRACT

Recognition of Cournot’s eminence has become almost axiomatic to economists. One of the most familiar treatments of duopoly and the mostfrequently employed equilibrium concept in game theory have been named after him: Cournot duopoly and Cournot-Nash equilibrium. Before Cournot (1838), writers on strategic interdependence such as Sun Tzu, Pascal and Waldegrave had formulated problems in the fields of war, ethics or card games. It was Cournot who first gave a rigorous analysis of market structure, and he gave it from a game-theoretic perspective.