HOW MANY FIRMS BECOME LEADERS?*

This paper investigates a quantity-setting oligopoly model with endogenous timing. We formulate an n-firm two-period model. Each firm chooses whether to take its action in period 1 or take its action in period 2 after observing the first-period actions of other firms. We call firms taking their actions in period 1 ‘leaders’ and those taking action in period 2 ‘following’. We find that the number of followers is at most one regardless of whether leaders have first mover advantage.