• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.313-333
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• 2020

This paper shows that when the exchange rate changes, there are conflicting effects on improving the quality and increasing market share of eco-friendly vehicles. In a vertically differentiated duopoly model consisting of high quality clean cars and low quality internal combustion engine cars, I set up a two-stage noncooperative game under perfect information that the quality levels and the prices of the cars are competitively determined. The vehicles are assumed to be produced in countries that use distinct currencies. When the exchange rate of the country that produces low quality cars rises, the producer prefers to intensify competition due to the relatively lowed cost, and the incentive for quality improvement arises from the intension of attempting to reduce the degree of differentiation of quality level. At this time, the clean car manufacturing firm tries to avoid competition due to weakened competitiveness, and increases the quality level to expand quality differentiation. However, in this case, the market share of eco-friendly vehicles shrinks. On the other hand, if the exchange rate changes in the opposite direction, the market share of eco-friendly vehicles is expected to increase, but the quality of both cars are deteriorated, causing a conflict effect.