Topological chaos in oligopoly competition

This letter demonstrates that oligopoly competition can exhibit topological chaos by applying Mitra’s sufficient condition. To overcome the computational challenges arising from the lack of a simple closed-form expression for the modal point, we develop a resultant-based method. Our results show that, for a sufficiently large number of firms, there must exist parameter values that guarantee topological chaos. • We show topological chaos can arise in dynamic oligopoly competition. • A symbolic computation method is proposed to verify Mitra’s sufficient condition. • Our method bypasses computational challenges when modal points lack simple expressions. • Parameter values exist where chaos emerges if the firm number is sufficiently large.