IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kyo/wpaper/589.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Collusion, Fluctuating Demand, and Price Rigidity

Author

Listed:
  • Makoto Hanazono

    (Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University)

  • Huanxing Yang

    (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania)

Abstract

We study an infinitely repeated Bertrand game in which an i.i.d. demand shock occures in each period. Each firm recieves a private signal about the demand shock at the beginning of each period. At the end of each period, information about both the underlying demand shock and the rival's prices becomes public. A firm's pricing schedule can be either a sorting scheme, in which its price depends on its private signal, or a price-rigidity scheme, in which the firm charges the same price regardless of its private signal. We consider the optiomal symmetric perfect public equilibrium (SPPE). The optimal SPPE consists of a profile of price-rigidity schemes if the accuracy of the private signals is low. Moreover, the lower the variance of the demand shock, the more likely that a price-rigidity scheme is optimal. These results contribute to our understanding of which industries, and under what conditions, should exhibit rigid prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Makoto Hanazono & Huanxing Yang, 2004. "Collusion, Fluctuating Demand, and Price Rigidity," KIER Working Papers 589, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:kyo:wpaper:589
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Garrod, Luke, 2012. "Collusive price rigidity under price-matching punishments," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 471-482.
    2. Mamello A. Nchake & Lawrence Edwards & Asha Sundaram, 2018. "Price-setting Behavior and Competition in Developing Countries: an Analysis of Retail Outlets in Lesotho," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 529-547, December.
    3. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2005. "Detecting Cartels," Economics Working Paper Archive 526, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    4. Malcomson, James M., 2015. "Relational incentive contracts with productivity shocks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 122-137.
    5. Luke Garrod & Matthew Olczak, 2017. "Collusion Under Imperfect Monitoring with Asymmetric Firms," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(3), pages 654-682, September.
    6. Harrington, Joseph E., 2017. "A theory of collusion with partial mutual understanding," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 140-158.
    7. Harrington, Joseph E. & Zhao, Wei, 2012. "Signaling and tacit collusion in an infinitely repeated Prisoners’ Dilemma," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 277-289.
    8. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr., 2012. "A Theory of Tacit Collusion," Economics Working Paper Archive 588, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    9. Lee, Gea M., 2010. "Optimal collusion with internal contracting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 646-669, March.
    10. Ari Kang & Richard Lowery, 2014. "The Pricing of IPO Services and Issues: Theory and Estimation," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 2(2), pages 188-234.
    11. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr. & Wei Zhao, 2010. "Signaling and Tacit Collusion in an Infinitely Repeated Prisoners' Dilemma," Economics Working Paper Archive 559, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    12. Sahuguet, Nicolas & Walckiers, Alexis, 2017. "A theory of hub-and-spoke collusion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 353-370.
    13. Noam Shamir, 2017. "Cartel Formation Through Strategic Information Leakage in a Distribution Channel," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(1), pages 70-88, January.
    14. Bagwell Kyle & Lee Gea M., 2010. "Advertising Collusion in Retail Markets," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-54, August.
    15. Danial Asmat, 2021. "Collusion Along the Learning Curve: Theory and Evidence From the Semiconductor Industry," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(1), pages 83-108, March.
    16. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr. & Wei Zhao, 2012. "Signaling and Tacit Collusion in an Infinitely Repeated Prisoners' Dilemma," Economics Working Paper Archive 587, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    17. Wang, Chengsi & Zudenkova, Galina, 2016. "Non-monotonic group-size effect in repeated provision of public goods," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 116-128.
    18. Gerlach, Heiko, 2009. "Stochastic market sharing, partial communication and collusion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 655-666, November.
    19. Ramakanta Patra & Tadashi Sekiguchi, 2021. "Full Collusion with Entry and Incomplete Information," KIER Working Papers 1055, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Collusion; private information; optimal pricing; price rigidity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:kyo:wpaper:589. 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: Makoto Watanabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iekyojp.html .

    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.