Basing-point pricing is known to have been abused by geographically dispersed firms in order to eliminate competition on transportation costs. This paper develops a topographic test for collusive basing-point pricing. The method uses transaction data (prices, quantities) and customer project...

In its landmark ruling in Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois in 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court restricted standing to sue for recovery of antitrust damages to direct purchasers. However, antitrust damages are typically (in part) passed on to intermediaries lower in the chain of production and...

We explore whether buyer groups, in which firms legally purchase inputs jointly, facilitate collusion in the product market. In a repeated game, abandoning the buyer group altogether or excluding single firms from them constitute more severe credible threats, hence, in theory buyer groups...

We conduct experiments testing the relationship between excess capacity and pricing in repeated Bertrand-Edgeworth duopolies and triopolies. We systematically vary the experimental markets between low excess capacity (suggesting monopoly) and no capacity constraints (suggesting perfect...

In a framework with an upstream monopoly and a downstream duopoly, we analyze the impact of convex costs on the downstream level. In contrast to the case of constant marginal costs, vertical integration does not imply complete market foreclosure. While the non-integrated downstream firm receives...