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 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 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...

Cartels may be exempted from competition law if they sufficiently promote sustainability objectives. To qualify, the collusive agreement should not fully eliminate competition. We study how remaining and fringe competition affect incentives to produce more sustainably under semi-collusion in an...

This article studies dynamic pricing strategies in the Italian gasoline market before and after the market leader unilaterally announced its commitment to adopt a sticky-pricing policy. Using daily Italian firm level prices and weekly average EU prices, we show that the effect of the new policy...

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 examine vertical backward integration in a reducedform model of successive oligopolies. Our key findings are: (i) There may be asymmetric equilibria where some firms integrate and others remain separated, even if firms are symmetric initially; (ii) Efficient firms are more likely to integrate...

In this paper, we study an imperfect monitoring model of duopoly under similar settings as in Green and Porter (1984), but here firms do not know the demand parameters and learn about them over time through the price signals. We investigate how a deviation from rational expectations affects the...

This paper proposes a generalized framework for the analysis of collusion in Bertrand oligopoly markets with possibly differentiated products and asymmetric cost structures. We first study how product differentiation interacts with the intensity of collusion (i.e., the cartel's proximity to the...

We investigate the effects of market transparency on prices in the Bertrand duopoly model for both the cases of strategic complementarities and strategic substitutes. For the former class of games conventional wisdom concerning prices is confirmed, since they decrease. The consumers are always...