Collusion under imperfect monitoring with asymmetric firms

Abstract

We explore the effects of asymmetries in capacity constraints on collusion where market demand is uncertain and where firms’ sales and prices are private information. We show that all firms can infer when at least one firm’s sales are below some firm-specific ‘trigger level’. When firms use this public information to monitor the collusive agreement, price wars may occur on the equilibrium path. Symmetry facilitates collusion but, if price wars are sufficiently long, then the optimal collusive prices of symmetric capacity distributions are lower on average than the competitive prices of asymmetric capacity distributions. We draw conclusions for merger policy.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/joie.12145
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Economics, Finance & Entrepreneurship
Additional Information: © 2017 The Editorial Board of The Journal of Industrial Economics and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joie.12145/abstract . This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
Uncontrolled Keywords: capacity constraints, mergers, collusion, ,imperfect monitoring
Publication ISSN: 1467-6451
Last Modified: 08 Jan 2024 08:32
Date Deposited: 24 Oct 2017 14:55
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://onlineli ... .12145/abstract (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2017-10-23
Published Online Date: 2017-09-15
Accepted Date: 2017-09-15
Authors: Garrod, Luke
Olczak, Matthew (ORCID Profile 0000-0001-6808-3832)

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