We characterise petrol pricing dynamics in an unusual policy environment. A timing restriction in the Western Australian market imposes discrete time pricing on petrol retailers, enabling us to observe the exact timing of price changes. We employ a Markov switching regression model, finding the...

The price commitment model of Maskin and Tirole (1988) provides an extensively cited foundation for Edgeworth cycles. We examine the viability of Edgeworth cycles when price commitment is partial in the sense that a subset of firms are committed to price in each period. If multiple firms are not...

We study the optimal behaviour of a cartel faced with fringe competition and imperfectly attentive consumers. Intertemporal price dispersion obfuscates consumer price comparison which aids the cartel through two channels: it reduces the effectiveness of free riding by the fringe; and it relaxes...

We show that the multi-nomial logit model of demand implies a constant markup of price above marginal cost for multi-product oligopolists. Further, for the random coefficients discrete choice model of demand, a multi-product oligopolist optimally sets the same markup for two products if they...

We develop a theory of optimal collusive intertemporal price dispersion. Dispersion clouds consumer price awareness, encouraging firms to coordinate on dispersed prices. Our theory generates a collusive rationale for price cycles and sales. Patient firms can support optimal collusion at the...