This paper studies the effects of seller concentration and static market power on tacit collusion in extensively repeated laboratory posted-offer markets. Contrary to the implications of some earlier research, we find that tacit collusion does not become pervasive with extensive repetition. In a ‘strong no power’ design persistently competitive outcomes are observed in markets with three or fou...

We study the optimal design of incentive contracts for experts in different collusion environments, and explore implications for the organization of delegated expertise. We consider a principal relying on experts to gather and report two signals about a project’s value. The principal can have a single expert gather both signals or two experts gather one signal each. We show that absent collusio...

This paper demonstrates that, under a set of weak assumptions, increased product differentiation will make it more difficult to sustain collusion when it is costly either to coordinate or to maintain collusion. These results contrast with the previous theoretical literature, which shows that, in the absence of these costs, greater differentiation can help foster collusion under some common mode...

We study collusion in an IPV auction with binary type spaces. Collusion is organized by a third-party that can manipulate participation decisions. We characterize the optimal response of the seller to different threats of collusion among the bidders. We show that, contrary to the prevailing view that asymmetric information imposes transaction costs in side-contracting, collusion in the optimal ...

This work considers the problem of frame collusion in video watermarking, one that is particularly relevant for this media due to the large collection of frames whose temporal inter-relationships may be exploited to facilitate estimation of the mark. Two new components are introduced: A mathematical framework for the statistical analysis of linear collusion and development of potential countera...

Background In India, roughly one-half of patients undergoing cancer treatment are unaware of their diagnosis or treatment. The intention of this study is to determine the prevalence of collusion and its influence on quality of life (QOL) among patients in palliative care settings. Methodology A cross-sectional study was conducted among 100 palliative care patients to assess the extent of know...

This article undertakes a cross-sectoral analysis of a salient empirical implication of the model of tacit collusion advanced by Abreu, Pearce, and Stachetti (1986). Specifically, we assess the prevalence of a first-order Markovian process for alternating between price wars and collusive periods through nonparametric tests. The analysis focuses on 30 different industries in Canada. The evidence...

This paper is the first to examine collusion at the extensive margin (whereby firms collude by avoiding entry into each other’s markets or territories). We demonstrate that such collusion offers distinct predictions for the role of multiple markets in sustaining collusion such as the use of proportionate response enforcement mechanisms, the possibilities of oligopolistic competition with a coll...

In Briata, Dall’Aglio and Fragnelli (2012), the authors introduce a cooperative game with transferable utility for allocating the gain of a collusion among completely risk-averse agents involved in the fair division procedure introduced by Knaster (1946). In this paper we analyze the Shapley value (Shapley, 1953) of the game and propose its use as a measure of the players’ attitude towards coll...

This chapter is to explain the China Model characterized with “high economic growth rate concomitant with high frequency of vicious accidents” by constructing a formal model of the local government–firm collusion. Section 2.1 introduces three famous or infamous events about PX (p-Xylene) projects in China and raises two questions relevant to these events. Section 2.2 makes a literature review o...