Does the incomplete information matter with export quotas?

Abstract

This study investigates whether or not incomplete information matters when the government adopts the export quotas in intervening in the oligopolistic export markets. Incomplete information the government has is about the unit-production cost of the domestic firm. It is shown first that quotas optimal under full information (full-information policy) result in Stackelberg outcome, the best outcome in a non-cooperative setting from the domestic firm's point of view. When the full-information policy is implemented in the presence of incomplete information, it is found that no cost-type has an incentive to misrepresent itself as the other type. This means that full-information outcome will be achieved with incomplete information. Hence, incomplete information does not matter in the case of export quotas. This result, however, does not carry over to the case of more than one domestic firm.