IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lmu/muenec/16179.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Actions Speak Louder than Words: Econometric Evidence to Target Tacit Collusion in Oligopolistic Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Andreoli-Versbach, Patrick
  • Franck, Jens-Uwe

Abstract

Tacit collusion reduces welfare comparably to explicit collusion but remains mostly unaddressed by antitrust enforcement which greatly depends on evidence of explicit communication. We propose to target specific elements of firms’ behavior that facilitate tacit collusion by providing quantitative evidence that links these actions to an anticompetitive market outcome. We apply our approach to incidents on the Italian gasoline market where the market leader unilaterally announced its commitment to a policy of sticky pricing and large price changes which facilitated price alignment and coordination of price changes. Antitrust policy has to distinguish such active promotion of a collusive strategy from passive (best response) alignment. Our results imply the necessity of stronger legal instruments which target unilateral conduct that aims at bringing about collusion.

Suggested Citation

  • Andreoli-Versbach, Patrick & Franck, Jens-Uwe, 2013. "Actions Speak Louder than Words: Econometric Evidence to Target Tacit Collusion in Oligopolistic Markets," Discussion Papers in Economics 16179, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:lmu:muenec:16179
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/16179/1/AndreoliVersbach_Franck_2013.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Connor, 2005. "Collusion and price dispersion," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(6), pages 335-338.
    2. Susan Athey & Kyle Bagwell & Chris Sanchirico, 2004. "Collusion and Price Rigidity," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(2), pages 317-349.
    3. Garrod, Luke, 2012. "Collusive price rigidity under price-matching punishments," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 471-482.
    4. Athey, Susan & Bagwell, Kyle, 2001. "Optimal Collusion with Private Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(3), pages 428-465, Autumn.
    5. Motta, Massimo & Polo, Michele, 2003. "Leniency programs and cartel prosecution," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 347-379, March.
    6. Blanckenburg Korbinian von & Kholodilin Konstantin A. & Geist Alexander, 2012. "The Influence of Collusion on Price Changes: New Evidence from Major Cartel Cases," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 13(3), pages 245-256, August.
    7. Jay R. Ritter, 2008. "Forensic Finance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(3), pages 127-147, Summer.
    8. Tomaso Duso & Lars-Hendrik Röller & Jo Seldeslachts, 2014. "Collusion Through Joint R&D: An Empirical Assessment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(2), pages 349-370, May.
    9. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1991. "Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061414, December.
    10. Fonseca, Miguel A. & Normann, Hans-Theo, 2012. "Explicit vs. tacit collusion—The impact of communication in oligopoly experiments," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1759-1772.
    11. Green, Edward J & Porter, Robert H, 1984. "Noncooperative Collusion under Imperfect Price Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 87-100, January.
    12. Connor, John M., 2005. "Price-Fixing Overcharges: Legal And Economic Evidence," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19254, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    13. Harrington, Joseph E., 2006. "How Do Cartels Operate?," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 2(1), pages 1-105, August.
    14. Susan Athey & Kyle Bagwell, 2008. "Collusion With Persistent Cost Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(3), pages 493-540, May.
    15. Patrick Bajari & Lixin Ye, 2003. "Deciding Between Competition and Collusion," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 971-989, November.
    16. Abadie, Alberto & Diamond, Alexis & Hainmueller, Jens, 2010. "Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California’s Tobacco Control Program," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(490), pages 493-505.
    17. Eric Zitzewitz, 2012. "Forensic Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(3), pages 731-769, September.
    18. Christie, William G & Schultz, Paul H, 1994. "Why Do NASDAQ Market Makers Avoid Odd-Eighth Quotes?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(5), pages 1813-1840, December.
    19. Brian A. Jacob & Steven D. Levitt, 2003. "Rotten Apples: An Investigation of the Prevalence and Predictors of Teacher Cheating," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 843-877.
    20. Hay, George A & Kelley, Daniel, 1974. "An Empirical Survey of Price Fixing Conspiracies," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(1), pages 13-38, April.
    21. David Genesove & Wallace P. Mullin, 2001. "Rules, Communication, and Collusion: Narrative Evidence from the Sugar Institute Case," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 379-398, June.
    22. Sam Peltzman, 2000. "Prices Rise Faster than They Fall," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 466-502, June.
    23. Margaret C. Levenstein & Valerie Y. Suslow, 2011. "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: Determinants of Cartel Duration," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(2), pages 455-492.
    24. Mouraviev, Igor & Rey, Patrick, 2011. "Collusion and leadership," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 705-717.
    25. Bolotova, Yuliya V., 2009. "Cartel overcharges: An empirical analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 321-341, May.
    26. Zhongmin Wang, 2009. "(Mixed) Strategy in Oligopoly Pricing: Evidence from Gasoline Price Cycles Before and Under a Timing Regulation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(6), pages 987-1030, December.
    27. Severin Borenstein & James B. Bushnell & Frank A. Wolak, 2002. "Measuring Market Inefficiencies in California's Restructured Wholesale Electricity Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1376-1405, December.
    28. Alberto Abadie & Javier Gardeazabal, 2003. "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 113-132, March.
    29. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2006. "How Do Cartels Operate?," Economics Working Paper Archive 531, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    30. Abrantes-Metz, Rosa M. & Froeb, Luke M. & Geweke, John & Taylor, Christopher T., 2006. "A variance screen for collusion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 467-486, May.
    31. Marianne Bertrand & Dolly Chugh & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2005. "Implicit Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 94-98, May.
    32. Rotemberg, Julio J & Saloner, Garth, 1986. "A Supergame-Theoretic Model of Price Wars during Booms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(3), pages 390-407, June.
    33. Phlips, Louis, 1996. "On the detection of collusion and predation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 495-510, April.
    34. Andreoli-Versbach, Patrick & Franck, Jens-Uwe, 2015. "Endogenous price commitment, sticky and leadership pricing: Evidence from the Italian petrol market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 32-48.
    35. Severin Borenstein, 2002. "The Trouble With Electricity Markets: Understanding California's Restructuring Disaster," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 191-211, Winter.
    36. Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 2005. "Managerial incentives and collusive behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 1501-1523, August.
    37. 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.
    38. Paul R. Zimmerman, 2012. "The Competitive Impact of Hypermarket Retailers on Gasoline Prices," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(1), pages 27-41.
    39. Robert Porter, 2005. "Detecting Collusion," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 26(2), pages 147-167, December.
    40. Nathan H. Miller, 2009. "Strategic Leniency and Cartel Enforcement," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 750-768, June.
    41. Rotemberg, Julio J & Saloner, Garth, 1990. "Collusive Price Leadership," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 93-111, September.
    42. George Hay, 2000. "The Meaning of ``Agreement'' under the Sherman Act: Thoughts from the ``Facilitating Practices'' Experience," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 16(2), pages 113-129, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Kurdoglu, Berkay & Yucel, Eray, 2022. "A Cointegration-based cartel screen for detecting collusion," MPRA Paper 113888, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Stephen Davies & Peter Ormosi & Martin Graffenberger, 2015. "Mergers after cartels: How markets react to cartel breakdown," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(3).
    3. Andreoli-Versbach, Patrick & Franck, Jens-Uwe, 2015. "Endogenous price commitment, sticky and leadership pricing: Evidence from the Italian petrol market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 32-48.
    4. Stephen Davies & Peter L. Ormosi & Martin Graffenberger, 2014. "Mergers after cartels: How markets react to cartel breakdown," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2014-01, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..

    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. Andreoli-Versbach, Patrick & Franck, Jens-Uwe, 2015. "Endogenous price commitment, sticky and leadership pricing: Evidence from the Italian petrol market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 32-48.
    2. Escobar, Juan F. & Llanes, Gastón, 2018. "Cooperation dynamics in repeated games of adverse selection," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 408-443.
    3. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    4. Silveira, Douglas & Vasconcelos, Silvinha & Resende, Marcelo & Cajueiro, Daniel O., 2022. "Won’t Get Fooled Again: A supervised machine learning approach for screening gasoline cartels," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    5. Hunold, Matthias & Laitenberger, Ulrich & Licht, Georg & Nikogosian, Vigen & Stenzel, André & Ullrich, Hannes & Wolf, Christoph, 2011. "Modernisierung der Konzentrationsberichterstattung: Endbericht," ZEW Expertises, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, number 110525.
    6. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2005. "Detecting Cartels," Economics Working Paper Archive 526, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    7. Harrington, Joseph E., 2017. "A theory of collusion with partial mutual understanding," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 140-158.
    8. Dechenaux, Emmanuel & Mago, Shakun D., 2019. "Communication and side payments in a duopoly with private costs: An experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 157-184.
    9. Bolotova, Yuliya & Connor, John M. & Miller, Douglas J., 2008. "The impact of collusion on price behavior: Empirical results from two recent cases," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1290-1307, November.
    10. Garrod, Luke & Olczak, Matthew, 2018. "Explicit vs tacit collusion: The effects of firm numbers and asymmetries," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 1-25.
    11. Luke Garrod & Matthew Olczak, 2016. "Collusion, Firm Numbers and Asymmetries Revisited," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2016-11, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    12. Panayiotis Agisilaou, 2013. "Collusion in Industrial Economics and Optimally Designed Leniency Programmes - A Survey," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2013-03, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    13. Granlund, David & Rudholm, Niklas, 2023. "Calculating the probability of collusion based on observed price patterns," Umeå Economic Studies 1014, Umeå University, Department of Economics, revised 13 Oct 2023.
    14. Ari Hyytinen & Frode Steen & Otto Toivanen, 2019. "An Anatomy of Cartel Contracts," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(621), pages 2155-2191.
    15. David Spector, 2017. "Cheap talk, monitoring and collusion," Working Papers hal-01975642, HAL.
    16. Hinloopen, Jeroen & Onderstal, Sander, 2014. "Going once, going twice, reported! Cartel activity and the effectiveness of antitrust policies in experimental auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 317-336.
    17. Etienne Billette de Villemeur & Laurent Flochel & Bruno Versaevel, 2013. "Optimal collusion with limited liability," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 9(3), pages 203-227, September.
    18. Roux, Catherine & Thöni, Christian, 2015. "Collusion among many firms: The disciplinary power of targeted punishment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 83-93.
    19. Thomas Bourveau & Guoman She & Alminas Žaldokas, 2020. "Corporate Disclosure as a Tacit Coordination Mechanism: Evidence from Cartel Enforcement Regulations," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(2), pages 295-332, May.
    20. David Spector, 2022. "Cheap Talk, Monitoring and Collusion," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 60(2), pages 193-216, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    antitrust law; tacit collusion; oligopolistic competition; gasoline market;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L71 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Primary Products and Construction - - - Mining, Extraction, and Refining: Hydrocarbon Fuels
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:lmu:muenec:16179. 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: Tamilla Benkelberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.