We investigate the effect of a vertical merger on downstream firms’ ability to collude in a repeated game framework. We show that a vertical merger has two main effects. On the one hand, it increases the total collusive profits, increasing the stakes of collusion. On the other hand, it creates...

This paper reconciles the Cournot and Bertrand Models of oligopolistic competition, highlighting its weaknesses and giving an opinion thereafter. The pertinent question in this paper is why Cournot (1838) ignored the price and Bertrand (1883) ignored the quantity? From the review, the main...

When firms meet in multiple markets, they can leverage punishment ability in one market to sustain collusion in another. This is the first paper to test this theory for multiproduct retailers that sell consumer goods online. With data on the universe of consumer goods sold online in Sweden, I...

This paper shows that generators exercised increasing market power in the England and Wales wholesale electricity market in the second half of the 1990s despite declining market concentration. It examines whether this was consistent with static, non-cooperative oligopoly models, which are widely...

It has been argued that having a contract market before the spot market enhances competition (Allaz and Vila, 1993). Taking into account the repeated nature of electricity markets, we check the robustness of the argument that the access to contract markets reduces the market power of generators....

In contrast to the existing literature on repeated games that assumes a Þxed discount factor, I study an environment in which it is more realistic to assume a ßuctuating discount factor. In a repeated oligopoly, as the interest rate changes, so too does the degree to which Þrms discount the...

We investigate the role tacit collusion plays in Asymmetric Price Transmission (APT), the tendency of prices to respond more rapidly to positive than to negative cost shocks. Using a laboratory experiment that isolates the effects of tacit collusion, we observe APT pricing behavior in markets...

We analyze strategic leaks due to spying out a rival’s bid in a first-price auction. Such leaks induce sequential bidding, complicated by the fact that the spy may be a counterspy who serves the interests of the spied at bidder and reports strategically distorted information. This ambiguity...

Allowing firms to cooperate in their R&D is an industrial policy, which has received much attention in recent economics literature. Many of these contributions are based on the seminal analysis of d'Aspremont and Jacquemin (1988). We provide a general version of their model, which encompasses...

We analyze market dynamics under Bertrand duopoly competition in industries with network effects and consumer switching costs. Consumers form installed bases, repeatedly buy the products, and differ with respect to their switching costs. Depending on the ratio of switching costs to network...