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Is the French mobile phone cartel really a cartel?

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  • Mesnard, Louis de

    (LEG - CNRS UMR 5118 - Université de Bourgogne)

Abstract

France Telecom (FT), SFR and Bouygues Telecom (BT) have been fined by France’s Conseil de la Concurrence (CC) for organizing a mobile phone cartel with stable market shares (one-half, one-third and one-sixth respectively) and for directly exchanging commercial information. While not contesting the legal decision, it is argued here that the economic reasoning is flawed. 1) As the CC made much of the firms’ stable market shares, we have first followed this line of reasoning by considering that the market shares are quotas under uniform costs. Even if there is a general incentive to form a monopolistic cartel, BT was too small for it to be worth its while to join it; it is not necessary to exchange information directly to coordinate market shares and prices effectively; all partial cartels are unlikely. 2) We then considered that the non-uniform market shares are explained by the costs in Cournot competition which can be deduced from the observed market shares by assuming that the costs are kept the same when switching from Cournot competition to any form of cartel. We deduced that market shares cannot be other than stable and non-uniform; any monopoly is unlikely to come about, because FT has negative incentives to form a monopolistic cartel; no partial cartels of two operators are viable because at least one member would lose out. The paper also shows that Stackelberg competition is unlikely as well as Bertrand-Edgeworth competition. In conclusion, Cournot competition is the only arrangement that guarantees no losses to all operators.

Suggested Citation

  • Mesnard, Louis de, 2009. "Is the French mobile phone cartel really a cartel?," LEG - Document de travail - Economie 2009-02, LEG, Laboratoire d'Economie et de Gestion, CNRS, Université de Bourgogne.
  • Handle: RePEc:lat:legeco:e2009-02
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    Cited by:

    1. Florian Gössl & Alexander Rasch, 2020. "Collusion under different pricing schemes," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 910-931, October.
    2. Chen, Xu & Wang, Xiaojun & Chan, Hing Kai, 2016. "Channel coordination through subsidy contract design in the mobile phone industry," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(P1), pages 97-104.
    3. de Mesnard, Louis, 2011. "More firms, more competition? The case of the fourth operator in France's mobile phone market," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(2), pages 186-195, April.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cartel; Mobile phone; Mobile telephony; GSM; Conseil de la Concurrence; ARCEP ; Cournot ; Stackelberg;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
    • L96 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Telecommunications
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law

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