The paper investigates firms’ behavior and outcomes (levels of cost-reducing R&D, output, profit and welfare in equilibrium) in a differentiated duopoly with process innovation. One of the important features in this paper is that spillovers operate in the R&D stage and are tied to the degree...

The prohibition against price fixing is competition law’s most important and least controversial provision. Yet there is far less consensus than meets the eye on what constitutes price fixing, and prevalent understandings cannot be reconciled with principles of oligopoly theory. This article...

We analyze firms' ability to sustain collusion in a setting in which horizontally differentiated firms can price-discriminate based on private information regarding consumers' preferences. In particular, firms receive private signals which can be noisy (e.g., big data predictions). We find that...

Many markets, including markets for IPOs and debt issuances, are syndicated: each winning bidder invites competitors to join its syndicate to complete production. Using repeated extensive form games, we show that collusion in syndicated markets may become easier as market concentration falls,...

In this paper, the authors provide a rationale for why firms issue gift cards or vouchers. Mainly, issuing gift cards can be considered as a collusion-facilitating practice. A firm that issues gift cards can raise its price for several reasons. First, the discounted price by the face value of...

An antitrust authority deters collusion using fines and a leniency program. It chooses the probability of an investigation. Firms pick the degree of collusion: The more they collude, the higher are profits, but so is the probability of detection. Firms thus trade-off higher profits against...

We analyze spying out a rival's price in a Bertrand market game with incomplete information. Spying transforms a simultaneous into a robust sequential moves game. We provide conditions for profitable espionage. The spied at firm may attempt to immunize against spying by delaying its pricing...

This paper studies the effect of forward contracts on the stability of collusion among firms, competing in supply functions on the spot market. A forward market can increase the range of discount factors which allow to sustain collusion. On the contrary, collusion is destabilised when a...

We develop a model of interlocking bilateral relationships between upstream firms (manufacturers)that produce differentiated goods and downstream firms (retailers) that compete imperfectly for consumers. Contract offers and acceptance decisions are private information to the contracting parties....

Both in the US and in Europe, antitrust authorities prohibit merger not only if the merged entity, in and of itself, is no longer sufficiently controlled by competition. The authorities also intervene if, post merger, the market structure has changed such that "tacit collusion" or "coordinated...