Unlawful collusion is when firms have a mutual understanding to coordinate their behavior for the purpose of achieving a supracompetitive outcome. Given the legal focus on mutual beliefs, this paper initiates a research program to explore how much and what type of mutual beliefs among firms...

This paper identifies three classes of public announcements which facilitate coordination among competitors to restrict competition. Nine episodes of collusion are investigated to understand how this method of communication operates and is effective. An assessment of the conduct of competition...

Competitors privately sharing price intentions is universally prohibited under antitrust/competition law. In contrast, there is no common well-accepted treatment of competitors privately sharing prices. This paper shows that firms sharing prices leads to higher prices. Based on this theory of...

After arguing that collusion by software programs which choose pricing rules without any human intervention is not in violation of section 1 of the Sherman Act, the paper offers a path towards making collusion by autonomous agents unlawful

Estimates of average cartel duration and the annual probability of cartel death are based on data for discovered cartels. It is recognized that these estimates could be biased because the population of discovered cartels may not be a representative sample of the latent population of cartels....

There are well-documented episodes for which prices remained at supracompetitive levels even after a cartel had been shut down by the competition authority. As long as market conditions remain reasonably stable, it is quite possible that collusive prices will still be incentive compatible so the...