Forward trading and collusion in oligopoly

We consider an infinitely repeated oligopoly in which at each period firms not only serve the spot market by either competing in prices or quantities but also have the opportunity to trade forward contracts. Contrary to the pro-competitive results of finite-horizon models, we find that the possibility of forward trading allows firms to sustain collusive profits that otherwise would not be possible to achieve. The result holds both for price and quantity competition and follows because (collusive) contracting of future sales is more effective in deterring deviations from the collusive plan than inducing the previously identified pro-competitive effects.     

The scope for collusion under fractional defections

This paper examines the scope for firms to collude in an oligopoly supergame, when firms defect by producing a fraction of their best response outputs. Such deviations from the collusive equilibrium are termed fractional defections. We show that the joint profit maximizing output level cannot be sustained under fractional defections and identify the most collusive output level. The paper also investigates the ability of firms to collude as both demand and the number of firms in the industry vary. The results reveal that the degree of collusion is inversely related to the level of demand and that high levels of concentration may in fact be inimical to collusion.     

Are low-price promises collusion guarantees? An experimental test of price matching policies

In a symmetric differentiated experimental duopoly we test the ability of Price Matching Guarantees (PMG) to raise prices above the competitive levels. PMG are introduced both as a market rule (the selling price is always the lowest posted price) and as a business strategy (subjects decide whether or not to offer them). Our results show that PMG lead to a clear collusive outcome as markets quickly and fully converge to the collusive prediction if PMG are imposed as a market rule. Whenever subjects are allowed to decide whether to adopt PMG or not we observe that almost all subjects decide to adopt them and prices get very close to the collusive ones.      

Semicollusion vs. Full Collusion: The Role of Demand Uncertainty and Product Substitutability

We examine the profitability of two different cartel organizational forms: full collusion, under which firms collude on both price and quality, and semicollusion, under which firms collude on price only. We show that, in the presence of demand uncertainty that cannot be contracted upon in the cartel agreement, firms may be better off limiting their collusive agreement to price only. However, a positive relationship between demand uncertainty and the relative profitability of semicollusion exists only for low levels of demand substitutability. The converse is true for high levels of demand substitutability. Therefore, if demand substitutability is sufficiently high, no level of demand uncertainty will make semicollusion the optimal organizational form. In contrast, semicollusion is guaranteed to be optimal for a sufficiently low level of demand substitutability. The market structure described is motivated by and closely parallels that of shipping cartels. Received September 29, 2000; revised version received December 10, 2001 Published online: November 11, 2002     

Collusion and Price Rigidity

We consider an infinitely repeated Bertrand game, in which prices are publicly observed and each firm receives a privately observed, i.i.d. cost shock in each period. We focus on symmetric perfect public equilibria, wherein any "punishments" are borne equally by all firms. We identify a tradeoff that is associated with collusive pricing schemes in which the price to be charged by each firm is strictly increasing in its cost level: such "fully sorting" schemes offer efficiency benefits, as they ensure that the lowest-cost firm makes the current sale, but they also imply an informational cost (distorted pricing and/or equilibrium-path price wars), since a higher-cost firm must be deterred from mimicking a lower-cost firm by charging a lower price. A rigid-pricing scheme, where a firm's collusive price is independent of its current cost position, sacrifices efficiency benefits but also diminishes the informational cost. For a wide range of settings, the optimal symmetric collusive scheme requires (i) the absence of equilibrium-path price wars and (ii) a rigid price. If firms are sufficiently impatient, however, the rigid-pricing scheme cannot be enforced, and the collusive price of lower-cost firms may be distorted downward in order to diminish the incentive to cheat. When the model is modified to include i.i.d. public demand shocks, the downward pricing distortion that accompanies a firm's lower-cost realization may occur only when current demand is high.     

Collusive outcomes in price competition

In this paper we provide a sufficient condition for collusive outcomes in a single-shot game of simultaneous price choice in a homogeneous product market with symmetric firms and strictly convex costs. We also prove the counterintuitive result: if the second derivative of the cost function is nonincreasing in output, it is easier to sustain collusion when the number of firms increases.     

均衡价格--动态市场价格的形成与变化趋势

本介绍了用来模拟动态市场价格的微分方程模型，此模型反映了价格对需求与供给的影响，而需求与供给反过来又影响价格确定的过程，并说明了均衡价格是市场价格的最终变化趋势，并用蛛网理论对产量和价格的波动进行了分析。     

Tacit collusion with imperfect monitoring in the Canadian manufacturing industry: an empirical study

This article undertakes a cross-sectoral analysis of a salient empirical implication of the model of tacit collusion advanced by Abreu, Pearce, and Stachetti (1986). Specifically, we assess the prevalence of a first-order Markovian process for alternating between price wars and collusive periods through nonparametric tests. The analysis focuses on 30 different industries in Canada. The evidence provides weak support for optimal collusion in one industry, which is consistent with the idea that such kind of collusive arrangements is unusual, or, if collusion is all too common, that price wars as deviations from collusion are rare.     

COOPERATIVE MANAGERIAL DELEGATION,R&D AND COLLUSION

Existing literature on managerial delegation indicates that collusive outcomes can be obtained in an oligopoly game through cooperative managerial delegation. In contrast, this paper shows that, if managers are delegated to choose R&D, in addition to choosing production levels, full‐collusive outcomes cannot be achieved through cooperative delegation. Moreover, (i) under cooperative delegation, semi‐collusion always yields lower profit, higher R&D, higher price and lower social welfare than that in the case of competition and (ii) cooperative delegation leads to a higher profit lower R&D, higher price and lower social welfare than the no delegation case, irrespective of product market conduct.     

Transparency on the consumer side and tacit collusion

This paper investigates the effects on tacit collusion of increased market transparency on the consumer side of a market in a differentiated Hotelling duopoly. Increasing market transparency increases the benefits to a firm from undercutting the collusive price. It also decreases the punishment profit. The net effect is that collusion becomes harder to sustain. In the limiting homogeneous market, the effect vanishes. Here market transparency does not affect the possibilities for tacit collusion.     

On prices’ cyclical behaviour in oligopolistic markets

We revisit the discussion about the relationship between price’s cyclical features, implicit collusion and the demand level in an oligopoly supergame where a positive shock may hit demand and disrupt collusion. The novel feature of our model consists in characterising the post-shock noncooperative price and comparing it against the cartel price played in the last period of the collusive path, to single out the conditions for procyclicality to arise both in the short and in the long-run. This poses an issue in terms of an antitrust agency’s ability to draw well defined conclusions on the firms’ behaviour after the occurrence of the shock, with particular reference for the litigation phase after a cartel breakdown.     

Taxation and the sustainability of collusion: ad valorem versus specific taxes

Assuming constant marginal cost, it is shown that a switch from specific to ad valorem taxation that results in the same collusive price has no effect on the critical discount factor required to sustain collusion. This result is shown to hold for Cournot oligopoly when collusion is sustained with Nash-reversion strategies or optimal-punishment strategies. In a Cournot duopoly model with linear demand and quadratic costs, it is shown that the critical discount factor is lower with an ad valorem tax than with a specific tax that results in the same collusive price. However, in contrast to Colombo and Labrecciosa (J Public Econ 97:196–205, 2013) it is shown that the revenue is always higher with an ad valorem tax than with a specific tax.     

Forecasting crude oil spot price using OECD petroleum inventory levels

This paper presents a short-term monthly forecasting model of West Texas Intermediate crude oil spot price using OECD petroleum inventory levels. Theoretically, petroleum inventory levels are a measure of the balance, or imbalance, between petroleum production and demand, and thus provide a good market barometer of crude oil price change. Based on an understanding of petroleum market fundamentals and observed market behavior during the post-Gulf War period, the model was developed with the objectives of being both simple and practical, with required data readily available. As a result, the model is useful to industry and government decision-makers in forecasting price and investigating the impacts of changes on price, should inventories, production, imports, or demand change. This work is partially sponsored by the Office of Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Department of Energy, USA, and was presented at the International Atlantic Economic Conference, Athens, Greece, March 2001.     

A Keynesian general equilibrium model with competitive firms and rational expectations

A Keynesian general equilibrium model is developed from neoclassical principles. The model is based on competitive firm behavior, and optimizing agents that form expectations rationally. Firms determine their product price to maximize expected profits. Non-neutrality results follow from micro foundations that view firms as committing to a price and output level before actual demand is observed. It follows that optimal output levels are in part determined by demand conditions. In the general equilibrium framework, increases in government spending lead to welfare-improving increases in aggregate output.I thank Tom Cosimano, Strat Douglas, Douglas Gale, Norm Miller, Nick Rowe, Geoffrey Woglom, and two anonymous referees for valuable comments. The responsibility for potential errors remains entirely my own.     

The cost of collusion：economic thinking on the uniform accommodation price of the hotel industry in Kunming,Yunnan

This paper studies the case of the collusive price of the hotel industry in Kunming by economically analyzingthe unsustainability of the collusive price and instability of collusive organizations, doubts about the collusive behavior,and thinks that the collusive price is not helpful to the development of tourism industry, the pillar industry in YunnanProvince.     

Managerial incentives and collusive behavior

I characterize the effects of empirically observed managerial incentives on long-run oligopolistic competition. When managers have a preference for smooth time-paths of profits - as revealed by the empirical literature on “income smoothing” - manager-led firms can sustain collusive agreements at lower discount factors. Capped bonus plans and incumbency rents with termination threats make collusion supportable at any discount factor, independent of contracts' duration. When managers have these preferences/incentives and demand fluctuates, “price wars during booms” need not occur: the most collusive price may then be pro-cyclical.     

Cost‐Based Anti‐dumping as a Repeated Game

In this paper, we consider anti‐dumping (AD) duties as a tool to facilitate collusion between a domestic and a foreign firm in an infinitely repeated differentiated Bertrand game, where prices are publicly observable and each firm receives a privately observed i.i.d. cost shock in each period. We consider second‐best scenarios, where market‐share or production arrangement with sidepayments is not allowed. We show that there exist equilibrium‐path reciprocal ADs. The collusive (trigger) price is distorted downward compared with complete information benchmark as a trade‐off between diminishing the incentive to deviate and ensuring off‐schedule deviation gains when private cost shocks are highly favourable. The model differs from Green and Porter ( 1984 ) and Rotemberg and Saloner ( 1986 ) in that it is the private cost shocks as opposed to public demand shocks that necessitate modifications of collusion. In conclusion, AD policy may encourage collusion, and therefore, unless the source of market imperfection is carefully examined, laissez faire might be a better choice.     

Expectation errors and exchange-rate volatility

Exchange-rate volatility may be attributable to shifting market expectations, even in the absence of exogenous or policy induced shocks. The response of optimizing monetary policy to transitory deviations from rational expectations is examined. The effects of such deviations are shown to be enduring, their magnitude depending inter alia on the relative weight given by the authorities to output growth and price stability, and to differ qualitatively from overshooting of the Dornbusch type.     

Price collusion with free entry: the parasitic competition

The market equilibrium that is generated in the presence of both price collusion and free entry is analyzed taking under consideration the case of a homogeneous product and the case of differentiated products. The outcomes of this market regime are compared with those of other regimes, including competition (or monopolistic competition), monopoly, fixed price with collusive entry limitation. Some welfare implications of the market regime of price collusion with free entry are examined, with respect to the maximum social welfare allocation and the allocations of other market regimes, so to highlight the inefficiency of price collusion with free entry. The number of producers results to be the maximum number of firms that can produce without incurring into losses. Therefore, social distress is caused by a displacement from the price collusion equilibrium with free entry. Its defence can thus be considered in reference to the desirability of social goals that are in contradiction with economic efficiency.