IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cde/cdewps/217.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Multi-market Collusion with Territorial Allocation

Author

Listed:
  • ADITYA BHATTACHARJEA

    (Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi, India)

  • UDAY BHANU SINHA

    (Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi, India)

Abstract

This paper develops a supergame model of collusion between price-setting oligopolists located in different markets separated by trade costs. The firms produce a homogenous good and sustain collusion based on territorial allocation of markets. We first show, in a more general framework than some earlier literature, that a reduction in trade costs can paradoxically increase the sustainability of collusion. Then we prove a new paradox where the scope for collusion may be enhanced by an increase in the number of firms. We discuss several implications for trade and antitrust policy in this context.

Suggested Citation

  • Aditya Bhattacharjea & Uday Bhanu Sinha, 2012. "Multi-market Collusion with Territorial Allocation," Working papers 217, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cde:cdewps:217
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work217.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Byford, Martin C. & Gans, Joshua S., 2014. "Collusion at the extensive margin," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 75-83.
    2. John Gross & William L. Holahan, 2003. "Credible Collusion in Spatially Separated Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(1), pages 299-312, February.
    3. Damoun Ashournia & Per Svejstrup Hansen & Jonas Worm Hansen, 2013. "Trade Liberalization and the Degree of Competition in International Duopoly," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(5), pages 1048-1059, November.
    4. Bhattacharjea, Aditya & Sinha, Uday Bhanu, 2015. "Multi-market collusion with territorial allocation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 42-50.
    5. Belleflamme, Paul & Bloch, Francis, 2008. "Sustainable collusion on separate markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 384-386, May.
    6. Bhattacharjea, Aditya, 1995. "Strategic tariffs and endogenous market structures: Trade and industrial policies under imperfect competition," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 287-312, August.
    7. Markusen, James R. & Venables, Anthony J., 1988. "Trade policy with increasing returns and imperfect competition : Contradictory results from competing assumptions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3-4), pages 299-316, May.
    8. Eric W. Bond & Constantinos Syropoulos, 2008. "Trade costs and multimarket collusion," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(4), pages 1080-1104, December.
    9. Jeanine Miklós-Thal, 2011. "Optimal collusion under cost asymmetry," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 46(1), pages 99-125, January.
    10. Bolotova, Yuliya V., 2009. "Cartel overcharges: An empirical analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 321-341, May.
    11. Philipp J. H. Schröder, 2007. "Cartel Stability and Economic Integration," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(2), pages 313-320, May.
    12. Jay Pil Choi & Heiko Gerlach, 2012. "International Antitrust Enforcement And Multimarket Contact," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(2), pages 635-658, May.
    13. K. C. Fung, 1991. "Collusive Intra-industry Trade," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 24(2), pages 391-404, May.
    14. Luca Colombo & Paola Labrecciosa, 2007. "Sustaining Collusion under Economic Integration," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(5), pages 905-915, November.
    15. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2006. "How Do Cartels Operate?," Economics Working Paper Archive 531, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    16. B. Douglas Bernheim & Michael D. Whinston, 1990. "Multimarket Contact and Collusive Behavior," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(1), pages 1-26, Spring.
    17. Davies, Stephen & Olczak, Matthew & Coles, Heather, 2011. "Tacit collusion, firm asymmetries and numbers: Evidence from EC merger cases," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 221-231, March.
    18. Davidson, Carl, 1984. "Cartel stability and tariff policy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3-4), pages 219-237, November.
    19. Alberto Salvo, 2010. "Trade flows in a spatial oligopoly: gravity fits well, but what does it explain?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(1), pages 63-96, February.
    20. Valerie Y. Suslow, 2005. "Cartel contract duration: empirical evidence from inter-war international cartels," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 14(5), pages 705-744, October.
    21. Abreu, Dilip, 1986. "Extremal equilibria of oligopolistic supergames," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 191-225, June.
    22. 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.
    23. Harrington, Joseph E., 2006. "How Do Cartels Operate?," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 2(1), pages 1-105, August.
    24. Julio J. Rotemberg & Garth Saloner, 1989. "Tariffs vs Quotas with Implicit Collusion," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 22(2), pages 237-244, May.
    25. Fung, K C, 1992. "Economic Integration as Competitive Discipline," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 33(4), pages 837-847, November.
    26. repec:bla:reviec:v:9:y:2001:i:2:p:343-55 is not listed on IDEAS
    27. Bond, Eric W. & Syropoulos, Constantinos, 2012. "Economic integration and the sustainability of multimarket collusion," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 42-44.
    28. William Notz, 1920. "International Private Agreements in the form of Cartels, Syndicates, and other Combinations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(8), pages 658-658.
    29. Akinbosoye, Osayi & Bond, Eric W. & Syropoulos, Constantinos, 2012. "On the stability of multimarket collusion in price-setting supergames," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 253-264.
    30. Pinto, Brian, 1986. "Repeated games and the reciprocal dumping model of trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3-4), pages 357-366, May.
    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. Bhattacharjea, Aditya & Sinha, Uday Bhanu, 2015. "Multi-market collusion with territorial allocation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 42-50.
    2. Avdasheva, S., 2017. "Theory of Competition for Economic Policy," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 35(3), pages 170-176.
    3. Xiaowei Wang & Wuyan Long & Meiyue Sang & Yang Yang, 2022. "Towards Sustainable Urbanization: Exploring the Influence Paths of the Urban Environment on Bidders’ Collusive Willingness," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-14, February.
    4. Isogai, Shigeki & Shen, Chaohai, 2023. "Multiproduct firm’s reputation and leniency program in multimarket collusion," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).

    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. Delina Agnosteva & Constantinos Syropoulos & Yoto V. Yotov, 2017. "Multimarket Linkages, Cartel Discipline and Trade Costs," CESifo Working Paper Series 6829, CESifo.
    2. Roux, Catherine & Santos-Pinto, Luís & Thöni, Christian, 2016. "Home bias in multimarket Cournot games," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 361-371.
    3. Akinbosoye, Osayi & Bond, Eric W. & Syropoulos, Constantinos, 2012. "On the stability of multimarket collusion in price-setting supergames," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 253-264.
    4. Agnosteva, Delina & Syropoulos, Constantinos & Yotov, Yoto, 2020. "Preferential Trade Liberalization with Endogenous Cartel Discipline: Implications for Welfare and Optimal Trade Policies," School of Economics Working Paper Series 2020-9, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University.
    5. Delina E. Agnosteva & Constantinos Syropoulos & Yoto V. Yotov, 2024. "Preferential trade liberalization with endogenous cartel discipline: Implications for trade and welfare," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(4), pages 1109-1136, November.
    6. Andreas Freitag & Catherine Roux & Christian Thöni, 2021. "Communication And Market Sharing: An Experiment On The Exchange Of Soft And Hard Information," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 62(1), pages 175-198, February.
    7. Eric W. Bond & Constantinos Syropoulos, 2008. "Trade costs and multimarket collusion," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(4), pages 1080-1104, December.
    8. Byford, Martin C. & Gans, Joshua S., 2014. "Collusion at the extensive margin," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 75-83.
    9. Levenstein, Margaret C. & Sivadasan, Jagadeesh & Suslow, Valerie Y., 2015. "The effect of competition on trade: Evidence from the collapse of international cartels," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 56-70.
    10. Correia-da-Silva João & Pinho Joana & Vasconcelos Hélder, 2015. "How Should Cartels React to Entry Triggered by Demand Growth?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 209-255, January.
    11. Switgard Feuerstein, 2005. "Collusion in Industrial Economics—A Survey," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 163-198, December.
    12. 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.
    13. Hellwig, Michael & Hüschelrath, Kai, 2018. "When Do Firms Leave Cartels? Determinants And The Impact On Cartel Survival," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 68-84.
    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. 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.
    16. Bond, Eric W. & Syropoulos, Constantinos, 2012. "Economic integration and the sustainability of multimarket collusion," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 42-44.
    17. Aya Ahmed, 2015. "Asymmetric cartel formation under trade liberalization: Heterogeneous ï¬ rms with capacity constraints," Working Papers 2015.02, International Network for Economic Research - INFER.
    18. Philipp J. H. Schröder, 2007. "Cartel Stability and Economic Integration," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(2), pages 313-320, May.
    19. L. Colombo & P. Labrecciosa & L. Lambertini, 2005. "A Chicken Game of Intraindustry Trade," Working Papers 548, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    20. Dirk Schindler & Guttorm Schjelderup, 2009. "Harmonization of Corporate Tax Systems and Its Effect on Collusive Behavior," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 11(4), pages 599-621, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Multimarket contact; collusion; trade costs; territorial allocation; cartels;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure

    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:cde:cdewps:217. 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: Sanjeev Sharma (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdudein.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.