This study characterizes the corporate leniency policy that minimizes the frequency with which collusion occurs. Though it can be optimal to provide only partial leniency, plausible sufficient conditions are provided whereby the antitrust authority should waive all penalties for the first firm...

Standard methods in the U.S. for calculating antitrust damages in price-fixing cases is shown to create a strategic incentive for firms to price above the non-collusive price after the cartel has dissolved. This results in an overestimate of the but for price and an underestimate of the level of...

We explore the evolution of the structure and performance of a social network in a population of individuals who search for local optima in diverse and dynamic task environments. Individuals choose whether to innovate or imitate and, in the latter case, from whom to learn. The probabilities of...

This paper characterizes collusive pricing patterns when buyers may detect the presence of a cartel. Buyers are assumed to become suspicious when observed prices are anomalous. We find that the cartel price path is comprised of two phases. During the transitional phase, price is generally rising...

Price dynamics are characterized when a price-fixing cartel is concerned about creating suspicions of the presence of a cartel A dynamical extension of static models yields the counterfactual prediction that the cartel initially raises price and then gradually lowers it An alternative...

In Chang and Harrington (2000a) a computational model of a multi-unit firm is developed in which unit managers continually search for better practices Search takes place over a rugged landscape defined over the space of unit practices There it is shown that a more centralized organization is...

In reviewing the theoretical and empirical literature on collusion, this paper distills methods for detecting cartels and distinguishing collusion from competition.

Scientific progress is driven by innovation ?which serves to produce a diversity of ideas ?and imitation through a social network ?which serves to diffuse these ideas. In this paper, we develop an agent-based computational model of this process, in which the agents in the population are...

In the context of an infinitely repeated capacity-constrained price game, we endogenize the composition of a cartel when .rms are heterogeneous in their capacities. When .rms are sufficiently patient, there exists a stable cartel involving the largest .rms. A .rm with sufficiently small capacity...

To explore the efficacy of a corporate leniency program, a Markov process is constructed which models the stochastic formation and demise of cartels. Cartels are born when given the opportunity and market conditions are right, while cartels die because of internal collapse or they are caught and...