IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/indorg/v29y2011i6p705-717.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Collusion and leadership

Author

Listed:
  • Mouraviev, Igor
  • Rey, Patrick

Abstract

The paper explores the role of price or quantity leadership in facilitating collusion. It extends the standard analysis of tacit collusion by allowing firms to make their strategic choices either simultaneously or sequentially. It is shown that price leadership indeed facilitates collusion by making it easier to punish deviations by the leader. In case of pure Bertrand competition, price leadership restores the scope for (perfect) collusion in markets where collusion would not be sustainable otherwise. When firms face asymmetric costs or offer differentiated products, price leadership can also enhance the profitability of collusion—in case of asymmetric costs, the less efficient firm must act as the leader. Finally, such leadership is less effective in case of Cournot competition since, following an aggressive deviation by the leader, the follower would rather limit its own output, making it more difficult to punish the deviation. Still, quantity leadership may enhance collusion when it is already somewhat effective in a simultaneous move setting.

Suggested Citation

  • Mouraviev, Igor & Rey, Patrick, 2011. "Collusion and leadership," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 705-717.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:29:y:2011:i:6:p:705-717
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijindorg.2011.03.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718711000300
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijindorg.2011.03.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John C. Harsanyi & Reinhard Selten, 1988. "A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262582384, April.
    2. Hamilton, Jonathan H. & Slutsky, Steven M., 1990. "Endogenous timing in duopoly games: Stackelberg or cournot equilibria," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 29-46, March.
    3. Athey, Susan & Bagwell, Kyle, 2001. "Optimal Collusion with Private Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(3), pages 428-465, Autumn.
    4. van Damme, Eric & Hurkens, Sjaak, 1999. "Endogenous Stackelberg Leadership," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 105-129, July.
    5. van Damme, E.E.C. & Hurkens, S., 2004. "Endogenous price leadership," Other publications TiSEM 0bc41e9f-cede-46e7-bab6-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    6. van Damme, Eric & Hurkens, Sjaak, 2004. "Endogenous price leadership," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 404-420, May.
    7. Jeanine Miklós-Thal, 2011. "Optimal collusion under cost asymmetry," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 46(1), pages 99-125, January.
    8. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2006. "How Do Cartels Operate?," Economics Working Paper Archive 531, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    9. Maskin, Eric & Tirole, Jean, 1988. "A Theory of Dynamic Oligopoly, II: Price Competition, Kinked Demand Curves, and Edgeworth Cycles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(3), pages 571-599, May.
    10. Cooper, David J., 1997. "Barometric price leadership," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 301-325, May.
    11. Harrington, Joseph E, Jr, 1991. "The Determination of Price and Output Quotas in a Heterogeneous Cartel," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 32(4), pages 767-792, November.
    12. Raymond J. Deneckere & Dan Kovenock, 1992. "Price Leadership," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(1), pages 143-162.
      • Raymond Deneckere & Dan Kovenock, 1988. "Price Leadership," Discussion Papers 773, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    13. Dave Furth & Dan Kovenock, 1993. "Price leadership in a duopoly with capacity constraints and product differentiation," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 1-35, February.
    14. Ishibashi, Ikuo, 2008. "Collusive price leadership with capacity constraints," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 704-715, May.
    15. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, April.
    16. Deneckere, Raymond J & Kovenock, Dan & Lee, Robert, 1992. "A Model of Price Leadership Based on Consumer Loyalty," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(2), pages 147-156, June.
    17. van Damme, Eric & Hurkens, Sjaak, 1999. "Endogenous Stackelberg Leadership," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 105-129, July.
    18. Marshall, Robert C. & Marx, Leslie M. & Raiff, Matthew E., 2008. "Cartel price announcements: The vitamins industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 762-802, May.
    19. B. Douglas Bernheim & Michael D. Whinston, 1990. "Multimarket Contact and Collusive Behavior," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(1), pages 1-26, Spring.
    20. Harrington, Joseph E., 2006. "How Do Cartels Operate?," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 2(1), pages 1-105, August.
    21. George J. Stigler, 1947. "The Kinky Oligopoly Demand Curve and Rigid Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(5), pages 432-432.
    22. Rotemberg, Julio J & Saloner, Garth, 1990. "Collusive Price Leadership," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 93-111, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Scott M. Gilpatric & Youping Li, 2016. "Endogenous Price Leadership and the Strategic Acquisition of Information," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 82(3), pages 859-873, January.
    2. Güth, Werner & Pull, Kerstin & Stadler, Manfred & Zaby, Alexandra, 2014. "Endogenous price leadership – A theoretical and experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 420-432.
    3. Marshall, Robert C. & Marx, Leslie M. & Raiff, Matthew E., 2008. "Cartel price announcements: The vitamins industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 762-802, May.
    4. Hattori, Keisuke, 2016. "Profit-maximizing Wages under Duopoly," MPRA Paper 70288, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. van Damme, Eric & Hurkens, Sjaak, 2004. "Endogenous price leadership," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 404-420, May.
    6. Pastine, Tuvana & Pastine, Ivan, 2001. "Cost of Delay, Deadlines and Endogenous Price Leadership," CEPR Discussion Papers 3054, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Matsui, Kenji, 2016. "Asymmetric product distribution between symmetric manufacturers using dual-channel supply chains," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 248(2), pages 646-657.
    8. Attila Tasnádi, 2016. "Endogenous timing of moves in Bertrand–Edgeworth triopolies," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 12(4), pages 317-334, December.
    9. Shakun Datta Mago & Emmanuel Dechenaux, 2009. "Price leadership and firm size asymmetry: an experimental analysis," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(3), pages 289-317, September.
    10. Amir, Rabah & Stepanova, Anna, 2006. "Second-mover advantage and price leadership in Bertrand duopoly," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 1-20, April.
    11. Daisuke Hirata & Toshihiro Matsumura, 2011. "Price leadership in a homogeneous product market," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 104(3), pages 199-217, November.
    12. Mark Dijkstra & Maarten Pieter Schinkel, 2019. "State-aided Price Coordination in the Dutch Mortgage Market," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-014/VII, Tinbergen Institute, revised 13 Jul 2019.
    13. Kempf, Hubert & Rota-Graziosi, Grégoire, 2010. "Endogenizing leadership in tax competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 768-776, October.
    14. Boone, Jan, 2004. "Balance of Power," CEPR Discussion Papers 4733, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Angela S. Bergantino & Claudia Capozza & Mauro Capurso, 2018. "Pricing strategies: who leads and who follows in the air and rail passenger markets in Italy," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(46), pages 4937-4953, October.
    16. Andrea Gallice, 2008. "Preempting versus Postponing: the Stealing Game," ICER Working Papers 02-2008, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    17. Chen, Jing & Chen, Bintong & Li, Wei, 2018. "Who should be pricing leader in the presence of customer returns?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 265(2), pages 735-747.
    18. Miguel A. Fonseca, 2019. "Endogenous Price Leadership with Asymmetric Costs: Experimental Evidence," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 7(1), pages 59-74, June.
    19. Pierluigi Sabbatini, 2016. "The Coordinated Effect of a Merger with Balanced Sharing of Collusive Profits," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 345-371, September.
    20. von Stengel, Bernhard, 2010. "Follower payoffs in symmetric duopoly games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 512-516, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Collusion; Price leadership;

    JEL classification:

    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:29:y:2011:i:6:p:705-717. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505551 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.