IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/nlin-0411006.html

Emergent Effective Collusion in an Economy of Perfectly Rational Competitors

Author

Listed:
  • Russell K. Standish
  • Steve Keen

Abstract

We consider a simple model of rational agents competing in a single product market described by simple linear demand curve. Contrary to accepted economic theory, the agents' production levels synchronise in the absence of conscious collusion, leading to a downward spiraling of market total production until the monopoly price level is realised. This is in stark contrast to the standard predictions of an ideal rational competitive market. Some form of randomness in the form of agent irrationality, or non-synchronous updates is needed to break this emergent "collusion"

Suggested Citation

  • Russell K. Standish & Steve Keen, 2004. "Emergent Effective Collusion in an Economy of Perfectly Rational Competitors," Papers nlin/0411006, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:nlin/0411006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/nlin/0411006
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Keen, Steve, 2004. "Deregulator: Judgment Day for microeconomics," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 109-125, September.
    2. Julian L. Simon & Carlos M. Puig & John Aschoff, 1973. "A Duopoly Simulation and Richei Theory: An End to Cournot," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 40(3), pages 353-366.
    3. G. J. Stigler, 1972. "Perfect Competition, Historically Contemplated," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Charles K. Rowley (ed.), Readings in Industrial Economics, chapter 7, pages 105-130, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Challet, D. & Zhang, Y.-C., 1997. "Emergence of cooperation and organization in an evolutionary game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 246(3), pages 407-418.
    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. Russell K. Standish & Stephen L. Keen, 2015. "Rationality in the Theory of the Firm," World Economic Review, World Economics Association, vol. 2015(5), pages 101-101, July.
    2. David Rosnick, 2015. "Toward an Understanding of Keen and Standish's Theory of the Firm: A Comment," World Economic Review, World Economics Association, vol. 2015(5), pages 107-107, July.

    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. Keen, Steve & Standish, Russell, 2006. "Profit maximization, industry structure, and competition: A critique of neoclassical theory," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 370(1), pages 81-85.
    2. Chen, Yunong & Belmonte, Andrew & Griffin, Christopher, 2021. "Imitation of success leads to cost of living mediated fairness in the Ultimatum Game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 583(C).
    3. Anindya S. Chakrabarti & Diptesh Ghosh, 2019. "Emergence of anti-coordination through reinforcement learning in generalized minority games," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(2), pages 225-245, June.
    4. Wawrzyniak, Karol & Wiślicki, Wojciech, 2012. "Mesoscopic approach to minority games in herd regime," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(5), pages 2056-2082.
    5. Wang, Yougui & Stanley, H.E., 2009. "Statistical approach to partial equilibrium analysis," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(7), pages 1173-1180.
    6. A. Corcos & J-P Eckmann & A. Malaspinas & Y. Malevergne & D. Sornette, 2002. "Imitation and contrarian behaviour: hyperbolic bubbles, crashes and chaos," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(4), pages 264-281.
    7. Thorsten Chmura & Thomas Pitz, 2007. "An Extended Reinforcement Algorithm for Estimation of Human Behaviour in Experimental Congestion Games," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 10(2), pages 1-1.
    8. Naji Massad & Jørgen Vitting Andersen, 2017. "Three different ways synchronization can cause contagion in financial markets," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01673333, HAL.
    9. Karol Wawrzyniak & Wojciech Wi'slicki, 2013. "Grand canonical minority game as a sign predictor," Papers 1309.3399, arXiv.org.
    10. Challet, Damien & Zhang, Yi-Cheng, 1998. "On the minority game: Analytical and numerical studies," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 256(3), pages 514-532.
    11. Francis Bismans & Olivier Damette, 2012. "La taxe Tobin : une synthèse des travaux basés sur la théorie des jeux et l’économétrie," Working Papers of BETA 2012-09, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    12. Kalinowski, Thomas & Schulz, Hans-Jörg & Briese, Michael, 2000. "Cooperation in the Minority Game with local information," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 277(3), pages 502-508.
    13. Chen, Fang & Gou, Chengling & Guo, Xiaoqian & Gao, Jieping, 2008. "Prediction of stock markets by the evolutionary mix-game model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(14), pages 3594-3604.
    14. Xin, C. & Yang, G. & Huang, J.P., 2017. "Ising game: Nonequilibrium steady states of resource-allocation systems," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 471(C), pages 666-673.
    15. Roberto Savona & Maxence Soumare & Jørgen Vitting Andersen, 2015. "Financial Symmetry and Moods in the Market," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-21, April.
    16. Octavian-Dragomir Jora & Gheorghe Hurduzeu & Mihaela Iacob & Georgiana-Camelia Cre?an, 2017. "“Dialectical Contradictions” in the Neoclassical Theory and Policy Regarding Market Competition: The Consumer and His Continuos Burden of Crisis," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 19(45), pages 544-544, May.
    17. Geys, Benny & Konrad, Kai A., . "Federalism and optimal allocation across levels of governance," Chapters in Economics,, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    18. Linde, Jona & Sonnemans, Joep & Tuinstra, Jan, 2014. "Strategies and evolution in the minority game: A multi-round strategy experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 77-95.
    19. Mello, Bernardo A. & Cajueiro, Daniel O., 2008. "Minority games, diversity, cooperativity and the concept of intelligence," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(2), pages 557-566.
    20. Butler, Leslie J. & Burnett, Todd, 1992. "Cooperatives As A Source Of Countervailing Market Power In The California Lamb Market," Research Reports 140053, University of California, Davis, Center for Cooperatives.

    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:arx:papers:nlin/0411006. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.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.