Research on Dynamic Coopetition Under R&D Uncertainty: Capacity Sharing and Government Intervention for Strategically Scarce Capacity Holders

Optimizing collaborative innovation models in megaprojects with capital and knowledge inputs: a Stackelberg game approach

This study investigates collaborative technological innovation models between the owner and the supplier in megaprojects. It aims to optimize heterogeneous resource inputs, namely capital and knowledge and balance expected returns against systemic risks during dynamic technology accumulation under stochastic disturbances to advance core technology development. This study develops a continuous-time stochastic differential game framework. By solving the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations and endogenizing the supplier's unobservable effort, this study compares three innovation models: the independent innovation model, the capital sharing model and the collaborative research and development (R&D) model. The marginal revenue ratio acts as the primary driver of cooperation. Analysis reveals a “proportional rigidity” phenomenon where optimal investment allocation proportions remain unaffected by external stochastic shocks, determined solely by the internal benefit structure. Moreover, high supplier absorptive capacity and knowledge spillover risks induce a “defensive substitution mechanism,” which leads the owner to reduce capital sharing and increase direct technical intervention. Although collaborative R&D increases systemic variance, it achieves Pareto optimality and maximizes technology output. By integrating capital and knowledge within a dynamic framework of risk and return trade-offs, this study extends the existing literature on single-resource inputs. Furthermore, the research provides structural explanations for moral hazard and collaborative breakdown, thereby offering governance strategies and performance-based incentive mechanisms for complex engineering consortia. Methodologically, by embedding knowledge spillovers, absorptive capacity and endogenous effort into a stochastic differential game, this study defines the robustness boundaries and risk-return trade-offs across different collaborative models.

How Supply-Side Policies Influence High-Quality Technology Diffusion: A Complex Network Simulation Based on Evolutionary Game Theory

To examine the mechanisms through which supply-side policy instruments influence the early diffusion of high-quality technologies in technology markets, this study constructs a bilateral evolutionary model incorporating finitely rational technology suppliers and demanders based on evolutionary game theory and a bipartite small-world network. Through multi-agent simulations, the study analyzes the effects of government R&D funding, tax relief and technology transaction subsidies on the diffusion of high-quality technologies and the process of supply-demand strategy adaptation, with the aim of characterizing the role of public fiscal funds in screening for effective technology supply. The study reached the following main conclusions: First, under the baseline scenario, high-quality technologies exhibit a strong tendency toward endogenous diffusion, and supply-side policies primarily serve to accelerate marginal growth in the early stages rather than fundamentally altering the long-term convergence trend. Among these policies, R&D funding, as an ex ante incentive tool, has the most direct impact on early-stage diffusion; however, high-intensity funding leads to a decline in fiscal efficiency; Second, the independent effects of ex post incentive tools like tax relief and technology transaction subsidies are relatively moderate, with the former exhibiting high fiscal efficiency at low to medium intensities, and the latter exerting a moderate incentive effect by increasing the returns on successful transactions, though both suffer from diminishing marginal returns; Third, the supply-demand strategy fit index can be used to help characterize the supply-demand coordination process, but it cannot be directly interpreted as an indicator of technology quality or diffusion quality; Finally, robustness tests indicate that the main conclusions remain stable under perturbations to network topology, initial conditions, and Fermi noise parameters. Overall, the design of supply-side policies should simultaneously consider the timing of policy implementation, market-matching mechanisms, and fiscal cost-effectiveness.

Competence in R&D Among Asymmetric Universities: An Approach from GameTheory

This article develops a theoretical model to analyze the interaction between competitions andcooperation in public competitions for the allocation of research and development (R&D) resources, withan emphasis on universities with asymmetric capabilities. Using a Tullock-type framework, a strategicgame is modeled in which universities decide how much effort to invest to increase their probability ofsuccess and how much knowledge to transfer to their competitor. The institutional proponent’s evaluationof performance includes not only individual outcomes but also attributes such as cooperation and priorexperience. The model shows that cooperation can emerge endogenously if it is institutionally incentivized,and that knowledge transfer acts as a strategic externality that modifies the marginal costs of effort.Through numerical simulations, the effects of explicit incentives, structural asymmetries, and mandatorycooperation policies on equilibrium are analyzed. The results reveal strategies for designing public policiesthat seek to balance efficiency, equity, and collaboration in science and technology systems.

From Individual to Shared Ownership: A Coalitional Game Approach to Sustainable Co-investment

This paper proposes a cooperative game-theoretic framework for sustainable co-investment in shared infrastructure under regulatory incentives. Multiple heterogeneous operators co-invest in a common infrastructure whose production capability evolves over time and is subject to operational variability. A regulator supports the deployment through incentive mechanisms designed to align individual economic investment objectives with the coalitional one. We formulate the co-investment problem as a transferable-utility (TU) coalitional game in which the value generated by cooperation depends on heterogeneous operational profiles, dynamic resource availability, investment costs, and regulatory incentive level. We show that the proposed coalitional game can be reformulated as a linear production game (LPG), whose dual prices yield a constructive and stable allocation of the cooperative surplus. Finally, we illustrate the proposed framework through a case study on co-investment among data center operators in shared renewable energy infrastructure, supported by government subsidies promoting renewable energy consumption.

Formation Mechanism of Innovation Chain: How Do Innovation Subjects and Support Subjects Cooperate?

Despite extensive research on knowledge spillovers, existing literature has paid limited attention to the formation mechanism of innovation chains. To address this gap, this paper constructs a multi-party evolutionary game model including two innovators and one supporter, incorporating knowledge spillover effects, and empirically tests the theoretical predictions using data from Chinese listed companies (2016–2025). The results show that the final equilibrium is (cooperation, cooperation, support). Empirically, we find a nonlinear relationship between knowledge spillover and the formation mechanism of an innovation chain with a double threshold effect of absorptive capacity: the positive impact of spillover increases as capacity moves from low to moderate, but diminishes-while remaining positive-when capacity becomes excessively high, revealing an S-shaped pattern. The originality lies in two aspects. Theoretically, our multi-player model extends the conventional bilateral framework to better reflect real-world parallel collaboration. Empirically, our firm-level analysis of Chinese listed companies is among the first to identify a double threshold effect, moving beyond regional-level or single-threshold studies. Practically, our findings suggest that governments should tailor subsidy intensities to firms’ absorptive capacity levels—allocating more to moderate-capacity firms where spillover gains are maximized—offering a more precise strategy for promoting sustainable innovation chain development.

Technology-resource interaction innovation decisions in small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprise alliances: A dynamic biform game model