Enchères, concurrence par comparaison et collusion

Yardstick competition is an incentive regulatory tool which allows the regulator to introduce virtual competition into monopolistic industries. But as with any competitive environnement, regulated firms may have incentives to collude, thereby undermining the efficiency of the regulation. We study this issue using an infinitely repeated game framework with two symmetric firms. We show that, under the condition that monopoly rights are granted for a sufficiently long period of time, the use of auctions to attribute the markets before regulating them by yardstick competition may make collusion relatively harder to sustain. This result pleads for the use of auctions together with yardstick competition to struggle against collusive behaviours. Classification JEL: D42, D44, L50, L51