Though economists have made substantial progress toward formulating theories of collusion in industrial cartels that account for a variety of fact patterns, important puzzles remain. Standard models of repeated interaction formalize the observation that cartels keep participants in line through...

New Keynesian models of price setting under monopolistic competition involve two kinds of inefficiency: the price level is too high because firms ignore an aggregate demand externality, and when there are costs of changing prices, price stickiness may be an equilibrium response to changes in...

Agglomeration is a location pattern frequently observed in service industries such as hotels. This paper empirically examines if agglomeration facilitates tacit collusion in the lodging industry using a quarterly dataset of hotels that operated in rural areas across Texas between 2003 and 2005....

We study financial reporting and corporate governance in 218 companies accused of price fixing. These firms engage in evasive financial reporting strategies, including earnings smoothing, segment reclassification, and restatements. In corporate governance, cartel firms favor outside directors...

“Fixing” of the exchange rate (price) is a rule among the Forex market participating institutions to set a reference/settlement price for the day. Major fixings occur at 9:55 am Tokyo time for transactions between Japanese banks and their customers, and at 4:00 pm London time for...

Most of the theoretical work on collusion and price wars assumes identical firms and an unchanging environment, assumptions which are at odds with what we know about most industries. Further that literature focuses on the impact of collusion on prices. Whether an industry can support collusion...

Most of the theoretical work on collusion and price wars assumes identical firms and an unchanging environment, assumptions which are at odds with what we know about most industries. Further that literature focuses on the impact of collusion on prices. Whether an industry can support collusion...

An upstream manufacturer can use minimum retail price maintenance (RPM) to exclude potential competitors. RPM lets the incumbent manufacturer transfer profits to retailers. If entry is accommodated, upstream competition leads to fierce down- stream competition and the breakdown of RPM. Hence,...