The result of Colombo and Labrecciosa [Colombo, Luca and Labrecciosa, Paola (2006). 'The suboptimality of optimal punishments in Cournot supergames', Economics Letters 90, pp. 116-121.] that optimal punishments are inferior to Nash-reversion trigger strategies with decreasing marginal costs is...

This paper develops a model of the birth and death of cartels in the presence of enforcement activities by a Competition Authority (CA). We distinguish three sets of interventions: (a) detecting, prosecuting and penalizing cartels; (b) actions that aim to stop cartel activity in the short-term,...

We study antitrust enforcement that channels price-fixing incentives through setting fines and allocating resources to detection activities. Antitrust fines obey four legal principles: punishments should fit the crime, proportionality, bankruptcy considerations, and minimum fines. Bankruptcy...

In this paper we characterize optimal punishments with detection lags when the market consists of n oligopolistic firms that compete à la Cournot. It is shown how in the presence of detection lags optimal punishments fail to restore cooperation as long as the number of lags increases. Moreover,...

Theoretical literature on collusion has focused on a specific formulation of payoff fluctuations, namely by demand shocks, and showed that payoff fluctuations are bad for collusion. Introducing general payoff fluctuations, we show that (i) payoff fluctuations may strictly reduce the minimum...

In a repeated price game with long but finitely-lived consumers, the use of staggered long-term contracts enables firms to earn positive profits for a wider range of discount factors and market structures. Intertemporal bundling reduces the gains from business- stealing while leaving the cost of...

This paper studies evolution of firms' behavior in a networked Bertrand oligopoly market, in which firms who are located on vertices of a network compete in price with their neighbors. This network model is also applied to a market with multi-dimensionally differentiated products. In a...

We study a repeated Cournot competition model where prices are determined not only by firms' quantities but also unobservable market shocks (Green and Porter, 1984). Unlike Green and Porter (1984), market shocks are persistent and today's market condition affects tomorrow's market condition....