This paper tests whether upstream R&D cooperation leads to downstream collusion. We consider an oligopolistic setting where firms enter in research joint ventures (RJVs) to lower production costs or coordinate on collusion in the product market. We show that a sufficient condition for...

Purpose – This paper analyzes how Research and Development (R&D) cartelization and Research Joint Ventures (RJV) affect firms that engage in Cournot competition in their product market using a model in which the Home and Foreign firm produce differentiated products and export their total...

The paper analyzes the profitability of RDcooperation under asymmetric spillovers. It is shown that a firm prefers RDcompetition to RJV cartelization when its own spillover rate is low and the spillover rate of its competitor is high. While it prefers RDcartelization to RJV cartelization when...

Every year thousands of firms are engaged in research joint ventures (RJV), where all knowledge gained through R&D is shared among members. Most of the empirical literature assumes members are non-cooperative in the product market. But many RJV members are rivals leaving open the possibility...

Though there is a body of theoretical literature on research joint ventures (RJV) participation facilitating collusion, empirical tests are rare. Even more so, there are few empirical tests on the general theme of collusion. This note tries to fill this gap by assuming a correspondence between...