Sustaining Collusion under Economic Integration*

In this paper, we aim at investigating from a game‐theory perspective whether trade liberalization can promote a collusive two‐way trade. We show that, under Cournot competition, economic integration is anti‐competitive if collusive trade is a possible outcome of the repeated game; under price competition, the likelihood of collusive trade is a necessary but not sufficient condition for trade liberalization to be pro‐competitive. Furthermore, we show that economic integration may increase the scope for collusion irrespective of the firms’ strategic variable.     

我国企业共谋的经济学分析

文章从理论和实证两方面论证了我国企业共谋发生的主要条件是：不稳定的寡头垄断型产业组织结构＋过度竞争的市场环境,并用寡头垄断模型分析了我国企业谋所获取的市场力量、均衡条件和福利损失。结论是,我国一些行业已具备了企业共谋产业产生的条件,但不具备企业共谋生效的条件,因而,企业共谋是无效的。     

Through Trial and Error to Collusion*

In this article we study a very simple trial and error learning process in the context of a Cournot oligopoly. Without any knowledge of the payoff functions players increase, respectively decrease, their quantity as long as this leads to higher profits. We show that despite the absence of any coordination or punishing device this process converges to the joint‐profit‐maximizing outcome.     

政府补贴有利于企业创新效率提升吗 ——基于门槛模型的实证检验

选取我国2015-2017年沪深A股上市企业数据,在考察政府补贴对企业创新效率影响的基础上,构建面板门槛模型,探讨政府补贴对企业创新效率的门槛效应,并依据企业产权、所属行业和所在地区异质性进行分组检验。研究发现：①政府补贴对企业创新效率存在显著抑制作用;②政府补贴对企业创新效率的影响存在明显的双重门槛效应,且当政府补贴力度介于0~0.000 5之间时,补贴效果最优;③基于企业产权、所属行业和所在地区的异质性分组检验发现,政府补贴仍对企业创新效率存在抑制作用,但门槛效应差异较大。     

Interlinking and Collusion

In this paper, we suggest a new rationale for the existence of interlinked contracts in the agrarian economies of developing countries. Using the framework of an infinitely repeated game with discounting, we show that interlinked contracts can help the dominant parties to collude, in cases where collusion is not possible with noninterlinked contracts. This occurs because either interlinkage pools incentive constraints across markets, or it affects the incentives of agents to accept deviating contracts. We illustrate these mechanisms by considering the case of interlinkage between markets for credit and share tenancy. The model that is used to formalize the second mechanism is characterized by frictions in the tenancy market, which we model using the standard framework of search and matching.     

Conditions for Sustainable Optimal Economic Development

This paper shows that, for dynamic optimizing economies with different types of natural resource, environmental, and human‐made capital stocks, a necessary and sufficient condition for permanently sustaining an optimal utility/consumption level is the stationarity of the current‐value Hamiltonian. For economies whose development is not exogenously and directly affected by time (i.e., time‐autonomous economies), this stationarity condition generalizes Dixit et al.’s (1980 ) “zero‐net‐aggregate‐investment” rule of sustain‐ability, which in turn generalizes Solow‐Hartwick’s sustainability rule. For non‐autonomous economies, the stationarity condition is not generally fulfilled, and the current‐value Hamiltonian under (over) estimates the true welfare level by an amount equal to the discounted value of the net “pure time effect.” For the non‐autonomous case of a time‐dependent utility discount rate, a general condition on the discount rate function (of which the hyperbolic discount rate function is a special case) upholds the results obtained for autonomous cases. The paper concludes with a discussion of policies that promote both optimality and sustainability objectives.     

Collusion and Information Exchange

Antitrust authorities view that exchange of individual firms’ sales data is more anti‐competitive than that of aggregate sales data. In this paper, I survey antitrust implications of such inter‐firm information exchange. I argue that both types of information exchange are anti‐competitive under some circumstances. More precisely, I compare profits when each type of information exchange is allowed to that when firms can only observe their own sales (Stigler’s secret price‐cutting model), and the former is bigger than the latter. I also provide a general method to bound the equilibrium profits without such information exchange.     

环境监管中的博弈分析

通过建立环境监管问题的完全信息动态博弈模型,文章证明了在适宜的制度环境条件下,合谋可能是企业与地方政府的最优选择。针对优化制度环境,文章提出要加大来自上级政府的监督与制裁力度,改革地方政府的绩效考评制度等政策建议,以期改善地方环境状况。     

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.     

Collusion and biased tournaments

Tournaments are vulnerable to collusion. This paper finds that biased tournaments can be more effective at preventing collusion than unbiased ones. When agents can collude to exert low effort, introducing some bias into tournaments generates opposite effects on favored and disfavored agents׳ respective incentives to exert high effort and provides strong incentives for the favored agent to deviate from collusion. Introducing an adequate degree of bias reduces the principal׳s incentive cost for preventing collusion; however, granting excessive bias instead increases the incentive cost. We show that the optimal level of bias can be endogenously determined.     

Exchange Agreements Facilitate Collusion

A duopoly model with quantity competition is analyzed in which firms collude in two markets. There is specialization in production in order to promote efficiency. Firms may then either exclusively market one good each, or they may agree to exchange goods and cross-supply a part of the production to the other firm. It is shown that, compared to specialization in marketing, positive exchanges of goods relax the incentive constraints that limit the extent of collusion.     

论二元经济结构条件下西部发展极的金融支持

我国西部地区存在典型的二元经济结构特征。一个地区经济增长的启动，在相当程度上取决于该地区资金积累能力和资金使用效率。因此，要想较好地解决西部经济发展的二元结构问题。必须结合我国具体国情，发挥西部金融机构在不同层面的金融支持作用。     

Collusion and discrimination in organizations

In a principal-multi-agent setting we investigate how optimal contracts should be modified under relative performance evaluation when agents collude. Agents may write side-contracts, which are not contingent on their effort choices but indirectly control them through side-transfers. We show that the optimal collusion-proof contract is to introduce a “discriminatory policy” in the sense that the wage schemes offered to agents depend on their identities even if they are identical with respect to productive abilities. Such discriminatory wage schemes explain the organizational strategy of “divide and conquer” as an optimal response to collusion.     

Collusion in one-shot second-price auctions

Summary. Most of the literature on collusive behavior in auctions ignores two important issues that make collusion difficult to sustain at least in one-shot interactions: the detection of cheating and the verification of bids. Colluding bidders may deceive each other by using shill bidders. Also, if the identities of the bidders and their bids are not published then it would be difficult to verify the bid of a colluding bidder. This paper addresses these problems in one shot second price auctions where one bidder offers another bidder a side payment in exchange for not participating in the auction, while the number of other bidders is stochastic. In spite of the barriers to collusion mentioned above, a simple side payment mechanism which depends only on the auction price is introduced. It induces a successful collusion, eliminates the verification problem, provides no incentive for the use of shill bidders and guarantees that the proponent obtains ex-post non-negative payoff. The colluding bidders are ex-ante strictly better off compared with the competitive case, irrespective of their types.Received: 27 November 2002, Revised: 28 January 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C72, D44, D82.Yair Tauman: Correspondence toWe would like to thank an anonymous referee for very valuable comments and suggestions that significantly improved the paper. We thank Shmuel Zamir for a helpful discussion.     

关于总部经济发展的若干思考

总部经济在本质上是一种聚集经济,其作为产业集群发展的必然趋势,已成为现代区域及城市经济发展的一种选择模式。通过企业总部的集聚,借助外部经济效应,能够使集聚区域内的企业广泛相互受益,进而带动整个区域的经济结构调整与发展。文章分析了形成总部经济的经济学机理,并以发展总部经济的条件为基础,提出了促进总部经济发展的建议。     

Taxation Reform: Some Economic Issues

The Australian system of Commonwealth and State taxes is in need of comprehensive reform. It fails the criteria of neutrality, horizontal equity and simplicity, it is not as progressive as often thought, and the future revenue base is declining. Many of the problems stem from the absence of comprehensive tax bases as applied to income, expenditure and assets, and related choice options are subjected to very different effective tax burdens. Important choice options facing different effective tax rates include: work and leisure; consumption and saving; different saving and investment options; form of labour remuneration; different ways of production; the mix of goods and services produced and consumed; and, domestic or overseas location.
A comprehensive income tax base is required, especially as applied to the taxation of capital income. The options of a nominal income, real income or expenditure base are explored.
It is argued that reform of indirect taxes proceed along two lines. The general revenue raising purpose leads to a comprehensive base of final consumption expenditure at a single rate. Then, additional specific taxes for user pays purposes, for example for roads, and for externalities, for example tobacco, set at the supply cost or net externality would be applied.
There are conflicting arguments for and against changing the tax mix away from income to expenditure.