The empirical content of Cournot competition by

We consider the testable implications of the Cournot model of market competition. Our approach is nonparametric in the sense that we abstain from imposing any functional speciĕcation on market de-mand and ĕrm cost functions. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for (reduced form) equi-librium market price and quantity functions to be consistent with the Cournot model. In addition, we present identiĕcation results for the corresponding inverse market demand function and the ĕrm cost functions. Finally, we use our approach to derive testable restrictions for the models of perfect compe-tition, collusion and conjectural variations. is identiĕes the conditions under which these different models are empirically distinguishable from the Cournot model