We investigate the effects of passive backward acquisitions in their efficient upstream supplier on downstream firms' ability to collude in a dynamic game of price competition with homogeneous goods. We find that passive backward acquisitions impede downstream collusion. The main driver of our...

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...

We examine the effects of passive forward ownership on the sustainability of upstream collusion. We consider a homogeneous Cournot duopoly with competing vertical chains. In one chain, the upstream firm has non-controlling partial ownership over its downstream exclusive client. We find that...

Standard models of collusion require that all firms are forward-looking and strategic. When one firm displays naive behavior—i.e., when it is myopic, memoryless, or non-strategic—typical collusive strategies cannot be supported in equilibrium. Motivated by the increasing adoption of...

This paper investigates the effects on tacit collusion of increased market transparency on the consumer side of a market in a differentiated Hotelling duopoly. Increasing market transparency increases the benefits to a firm from underbutting the collusive price. It also decreases the punishment...

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...

We study empirically the price effects of upstream cartels that sell through downstream retailers to final consumers. We focus on a German coffee producer cartel that colluded under two different regimes: (i) involving wholesale prices in 2003 and (ii) with additional resale price maintenance...

This paper analyzes the impact vertical integration has on upstream collusion when the price of the input is linear. As a first step, the paper derives the collusive equilibrium that requires the lowest discount factor in the infinitely repeated game when one firm is vertically integrated. It...