This book has its focus on the dynamics of oligopoly games. Several contributions show how easily the unique Nash equilibria in some most traditional oligopoly models may lose stability, giving way to complex phenomena, such as periodic/chaotic processes, and to multi stability of coexistent attractors. The bifurcations producing these phenomena are studied by means of recently accumulated global methods, based on the use of critical curves. These tools are explained in a separate methodological chapter. The book also contains some historical background of the present theory. In this way the book becomes suitable also as an advanced text for industrial organisation courses. The various models presented in the book focus both classical Cournot types, and Hotelling`s "ice cream vendor" problems, including location choice. The author list comprises some of the most prolific contributors to current dynamic oligopoly modelling.

These proceedings are from a conference held at the Centre for Regional Science (CERUM) at Umea Umea University, Sweden, 17-18 June 2001. Unlike Un1ike many conference proceedings, this volume contains only on1y invited invited contribu- contribu- tions tions on specified topics so as to make the book coherent and self-contained. The authors and editors hope that this coherence will make the volume use- fu1 fuI also as a text for courses in industrial organisation. To this end two chap- ters on the history of oligopoly theory, from the beginnings with Cournot 1838, to the present day, and one chapter on modem methods for analysing iterated discrete time maps, have been inserted at the beginning ofthe book. Unlike Un1ike most current literature on games and oligopoly, this book is not focused on the usual topics of game theory: optimal strategies, dominance, and equilibrium. Rather it is the evolutionary dynamics, often of a complex type, inc1uding deterministic chaos, which are in focus. The contributions, after the historical and the methodological introductions, represent various segments of the research frontier in this area, though pains have been taken to tie some of the models to a number of most promising contributions from the frugal period 1929-1941, which have suffered from unjust neglect in the following industrial organisation literature.