Reinforcement learning (RL) based pricing algorithms have been shown to tacitly collude to set supra-competitive prices in oligopoly models of repeated price competition. We investigate the impact of ranking systems, a common feature of online marketplaces, on algorithmic collusion in prices. We...

Automated pricing comes in two forms - rule-based (e.g., targeting or undercutting the lowest price, etc) and artificial intelligence (AI) powered algorithms (e.g., reinforcement learning (RL) based). While rule-based pricing is the most widely used automated pricing strategy today, many...