The conventional wisdom is that cartels are bad. In particular, cartels that merely lead to lower production levels and higher prices are thought to be exclusively detrimental to social welfare. This is reflected in the fact that most capitalist societies have declared such so-called hard core...

In this paper we study the effect of information on the occurrence of intentional price wars on the equilibrium path. An episode of low prices is an intentional price war if it follows a period of high prices which was ended intentionally by one of the firms in the market (the price war leader)....

The theory of industrial collusion generally does not distinguish between tacit and explicit collusion. We show that if tacit collusion is not sustainable, firms may still be willing and able to collude explicitly when demand is viscous, the expected antitrust penalty is limited and antitrust...

We consider a model of dynamic price competition to analyze the impact of consumer inertia on theability of firms to sustain high prices. Three main consequences are identified: (i) maintaininghigh prices does not require punishment strategies when firms are sufficiently myopic, (ii) ifbuyers...

We consider a model of dynamic price competition to analyze the impact of consumer inertia on the ability of firms to sustain high prices. Three main consequences are identified, all of which contrast with predictions of the standard model of collusion: (i) maintaining high prices does not...

We study a framework where two duopolists compete repeatedly in prices and where chosen prices potentially affect future market shares, but certainly do not affect current sales. This assumption of consumer inertia causes (noncooperative) coordination on high prices only to be possible as an...

We study a framework where two duopolists compete repeatedly in prices and where cho-sen prices potentially affect future market shares, but certainly do not affect current sales.This assumption of consumer inertia causes (noncooperative) coordination on high pricesonly to be possible as an...

We analyze whether noncooperative collusive equilibria are harder to sustain when individual demand levels are not fixed but are able to fluctuate. To do this, we extend a Bertrand type model of price competition to allow for fluctuating market shares when prices are equal. We find that, the...