This paper addresses two questions: (1) does R&D cooperation facilitate price collusion, and (2) why do R&D partnerships break up at high rates (20% in one estimate)? Innovation creates an inter-firm cost asymmetry, which makes collusion difficult to sustain. The prospect of collusion ending with discovery makes collusion difficult to maintain before discovery. R&D cooperation averts this chain reaction and facilitates collusion before and after innovation. However, the firms’ inability to monitor partners’ R&D inputs constrains the extent of cooperation. To curb the opportunism, the partnership may dissolve itself with positive probability every time it fails to innovate.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics, Emory University (Atlanta) in its series Emory Economics with number
0415.