Global Dynamics of an Oligopoly Game Model with Nonlinear Costs and Strategic Delegation

A dynamic oligopoly game model with nonlinear cost and strategic delegation is built on the basis of isoelastic demand in this paper. And the dynamic characteristics of this game model are investigated. The local stability of the boundary equilibrium points is analyzed by means of the stability theory and Jacobian matrix, and the stability region of the Nash equilibrium point is obtained by Jury criterion. It is concluded that the system may lose stability through Flip bifurcation and Neimark–Sacker bifurcation. And the effects of speed of adjustment, price elasticity, profit weight coefficient and marginal cost on the system stability are discussed through numerical simulation. After that, the coexistence of attractors is analyzed through the basin of attraction, where multiple stability always means path dependence, implying that the long-term behavior of enterprises is strongly affected by historical contingency. In other words, a small perturbation of the initial conditions will have a significant impact on the system. In addition, the global dynamical behavior of the system is analyzed by using the critical curves, the basin of attraction, absorbing areas and a noninvertible map, revealing that three global bifurcations, the first two of which are caused by the interconversion of simply-connected and multiply-connected regions in the basin of attraction, and the third global bifurcation, that is, the final bifurcation is caused by the contact between attractors and the boundary of the basin of attraction.