IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rje/randje/v28y1997isummerp359-371.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Colluding on Relative Prices

Author

Listed:
  • Ralph A. Winter

Abstract

Firms sometimes agree to limit the discounts they offer a class of customers, i.e., they collude on the price differences across consumer classes. Why? Courts have struck down agreements to limit discounts as violations of the laws against price-fixing. Are these collusive agreements in fact efficient? This article addresses these questions in a multiproduct duopoly model. Under one interpretation, the incentive to collude on relative prices can be traced to heterogeneity in consumers' time costs. Under fairly general conditions, total surplus increases with the collusion. This efficiency effect is most striking in the case where collusion raises the prices faced by all consumers over which firms compete.

Suggested Citation

  • Ralph A. Winter, 1997. "Colluding on Relative Prices," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(2), pages 359-371, Summer.
    • Handle: RePEc:rje:randje:v:28:y:1997:i:summer:p:359-371
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0741-6261%28199722%2928%3A2%3C359%3ACORP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0&origin=repec
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.
    ---><---

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

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. de Palma, Andre & Lindsey, Robin, 2002. "Private roads, competition, and incentives to adopt time-based congestion tolling," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 217-241, September.
    2. Simshauser, Paul, 2018. "Price discrimination and the modes of failure in deregulated retail electricity markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 54-70.
    3. Janeba, Eckhard & Smart, Michael, 2003. "Is Targeted Tax Competition Less Harmful Than Its Remedies?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 10(3), pages 259-280, May.
    4. Wang, Judith Y.T. & Lindsey, Robin & Yang, Hai, 2011. "Nonlinear pricing on private roads with congestion and toll collection costs," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 9-40, January.
    5. Simshauser, Paul & Whish-Wilson, Patrick, 2017. "Price discrimination in Australia's retail electricity markets: An analysis of Victoria & Southeast Queensland," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 92-103.
    6. Bracaglia, Valentina & D׳Alfonso, Tiziana & Nastasi, Alberto, 2014. "Competition between multiproduct airports," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 270-281.
    7. Stole, Lars A., 2007. "Price Discrimination and Competition," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 2221-2299, Elsevier.
    8. Ganesh Iyer & David Soberman & J. Miguel Villas-Boas, 2005. "The Targeting of Advertising," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 461-476, May.
    9. Greg Shaffer & Z. John Zhang, 2000. "Pay to Switch or Pay to Stay: Preference‐Based Price Discrimination in Markets with Switching Costs," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 397-424, June.
    10. Dobson, Paul W & Waterson, Michael, 2003. "Chain-Store Pricing For Strategic Accommodation," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 677, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    11. Tommy Staahl Gabrielsen & Bjørn Olav Johansen & Odd Rune Straume, 2023. "National pricing with local quality competition," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 48-74, January.
    12. Aguirre Pérez, Iñaki, 2011. "Multimarket Competition and Welfare Effects of Price discrimination," IKERLANAK info:eu-repo/grantAgreeme, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico I.
    13. Douglas Cumming & Sofia Johan, 2015. "Cameras tracking shoppers: the economics of retail video surveillance," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 5(2), pages 235-257, December.
    14. Paul Simshauser and David Downer, 2016. "On the Inequity of Flat-rate Electricity Tariffs," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    15. Valentina Bracaglia & Tiziana D'Alfonso & Alberto Nastasi, 2014. "Multiproduct airport competition and e-commerce strategies," DIAG Technical Reports 2014-04, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza".
    16. Paul W. Dobson & Michael Waterson, 2005. "Chain‐Store Pricing Across Local Markets," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(1), pages 93-119, March.
    17. repec:aeg:report:2014-4 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    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:rje:randje:v:28:y:1997:i:summer:p:359-371. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.rje.org .

    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.