Maintaining Privacy in Cartels

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sugaya, Takuo; Wolitzky, Alexander
• 署名单位: Stanford University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/699975
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 2569-2607
• 关键词: Repeated games; multimarket contact; OPTIMAL COLLUSION; price wars; COMMUNICATION; INFORMATION; equilibria; oligopoly; payoffs

摘要

It is conventional wisdom that transparency in cartels-monitoring of competitors' prices, sales, and profits-facilitates collusion. However, in several recent cases cartels have instead worked to preserve the privacy of their participants' actions and outcomes. Toward explaining this behavior, we show that cartels can sometimes sustain higher profits when actions and outcomes are observed only privately, because better information can hinder collusion by helping firms devise more profitable deviations from the collusive agreement. We provide conditions under which maintaining privacy is optimal for cartels that follow a market-segmentation strategy.