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What Collusion? Unilateral Market Power as a Catalyst for Countercyclical Markups

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  • Bart Wilson

Abstract

This paper presents and tests a simple model of competitive and unilateral market power regimes that yields countercyclical markups. Following a decrease in demand in the short run, capacity-constrained firms may have a strong incentive not to lower their prices to the new competitive price. Demand shocks may introduce market power into a previously competitive market. Experimental posted offer markets support this conjecture with complete information on the market structure. With only private information, there appears to be a hysteresis effect concerning supracompetitive prices, i.e., markets with a history of supracompetitive pricing continue to generate supracompetitive prices following demand shocks. However, competitive markets also remain competitive following demand shocks when firms only have private information on costs and capacities. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

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  • Bart Wilson, 1998. "What Collusion? Unilateral Market Power as a Catalyst for Countercyclical Markups," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(2), pages 133-145, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:expeco:v:1:y:1998:i:2:p:133-145
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1009972125288
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    Cited by:

    1. Kephart, Curtis & Munro, David, 2023. "Market concentration and the responsiveness of prices and mark-ups," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    2. Abdullah Yavas, 2001. "Impossibility of a Competitive Equilibrium in the Real Estate Brokerage Industry," Journal of Real Estate Research, American Real Estate Society, vol. 21(3), pages 187-200.
    3. Davis, Douglas D. & Wilson, Bart J., 2005. "Differentiated product competition and the Antitrust Logit Model: an experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 89-113, May.
    4. Davis, Douglas D. & Wilson, Bart J., 2008. "Strategic buyers, horizontal mergers and synergies: An experimental investigation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 643-661, May.
    5. Erik O. Kimbrough & Andrew Smyth, 2017. "Testing the Boundaries of the Double Auction," Discussion Papers dp17-05, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University.
    6. Douglas Davis & Bart Wilson, 2006. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion, Mergers and Synergies: An Experimental Investigation of Differentiated Product Competition," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 169-194.
    7. Kimbrough, Erik O. & Smyth, Andrew, 2018. "Testing the boundaries of the double auction: The effects of complete information and market power," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 372-396.

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