This paper analyzes the inner workings of cartels. To understand how sanctioning institutions prevent cartel formation … we study their effect on firms' communication in a laboratory experiment. Using machine learning to organize the chat … communication into topics, we find that firms are less likely to communicate explicitly about price fixing when sanctioning …

innocuous communication and communication about a cartel, sanctioning only the latter. To this aim, we introduce a participant …The experimental literature on antitrust enforcement provides robust evidence that communication plays an important … in the role of the competition authority, who is properly incentivized to judge communication content and price setting …

output levels and a common price, which includes a stochastic component. Without communication, firms fail to discriminate … has happened, communication facilitates detection of deviations but reduces collusive profits due to the risk of exposure … the trigger price. Moreover, they tend to communicate more often as they become less patient, a cartel grows in size, or …