IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/apeclt/v18y2011i11p1043-1047.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Collusion, competition and piracy

Author

Listed:
  • Francisco Martinez-Sanchez

Abstract

In this article we analyse firms' ability to tacitly collude on prices in an infinitely repeated duopoly game of vertical product differentiation. We show that firms collude if and only if their discount factor is high enough, that is, if they value future profits sufficiently. We also show that a lower cost of copying facilitates collusion but that a higher quality of the copy hinders collusion. Thus, the overall effect of these new characteristics of copies made by consumers is ambiguous.

Suggested Citation

  • Francisco Martinez-Sanchez, 2011. "Collusion, competition and piracy," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(11), pages 1043-1047.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:18:y:2011:i:11:p:1043-1047
    DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2010.522514
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&doi=10.1080/13504851.2010.522514&magic=repec&7C&7C8674ECAB8BB840C6AD35DC6213A474B5
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13504851.2010.522514?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Belleflamme & Pierre M. Picard, 2007. "Piracy and Competition," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(2), pages 351-383, June.
    2. James W. Friedman, 1971. "A Non-cooperative Equilibrium for Supergames," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(1), pages 1-12.
    3. Hackner, Jonas, 1996. "Optimal symmetric punishments in a Bertrand differentiated products duopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 611-630, July.
    4. Nikolaos Georgantzis & Carlos Gutiérrez-Hita, 2008. "Service provision on a network with endogenous consumption capacity," Working Papers. Serie AD 2008-01, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    5. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:6:y:2003:i:10:p:1-9 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Bae, Sang Hoo & Choi, Jay Pil, 2006. "A model of piracy," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 303-320, September.
    7. Schultz, Christian, 2005. "Transparency on the consumer side and tacit collusion," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 279-297, February.
    8. Francisco Martínez-Sánchez, 2007. "Why Does The Pirate Decide To Be The Leader In Prices?," Working Papers. Serie AD 2007-01, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    9. Theo Papadopoulos, 2003. "Determinants of International Sound Recording Piracy," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 6(10), pages 1-9.
    10. Chang, Myong-Hun, 1991. "The effects of product differentiation on collusive pricing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 453-469, September.
    11. Peitz, Martin & Waelbroeck, Patrick, 2006. "Piracy of digital products: A critical review of the theoretical literature," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 449-476, November.
    12. Francisco Martinez, 2008. "Learning by Copying," ThE Papers 08/05, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    13. Liu, Qihong & Serfes, Konstantinos, 2007. "Market segmentation and collusive behavior," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 355-378, April.
    14. Hackner, Jonas, 1994. "Collusive pricing in markets for vertically differentiated products," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 155-177, June.
    15. Iturbe-Ormaetxe, Iñigo & Ponti, Giovanni & Tomás, Josefa & Ubeda, Luis, 2011. "Framing effects in public goods: Prospect Theory and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 439-447, June.
    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. Romeu, Andrés & Martinez-Sanchez, Francisco, 2015. "Technological Development and Software Piracy," UMUFAE Economics Working Papers 43702, DIGITUM. Universidad de Murcia.
    2. Nikolay Zenkevich & Margarita Gladkova, 2016. "Price Competition on the Market of Counterfeiting Software," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 18(02), pages 1-10, June.
    3. Martínez-Sánchez, Francisco, 2020. "Preventing commercial piracy when consumers are loss averse," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(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. Döpper, Hendrik & Rasch, Alexander, 2024. "Combinable products, price discrimination, and collusion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    2. Stefano Colombo, 2009. "The unidirectional Hotelling model with spatial price discrimination," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(4), pages 3031-3040.
    3. Stefano Colombo, 2011. "Pricing Policy and Partial Collusion," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 325-349, December.
    4. Stefano Colombo, 2012. "Collusion in two models of spatial competition with quantity-setting firms," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 48(1), pages 45-69, February.
    5. Hasnas, Irina & Wey, Christian, 2015. "Full versus partial collusion among brands and private label producers," DICE Discussion Papers 190, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    6. Rasch, Alexander & Gössl, Florian, 2016. "The scope for collusion under different pricing schemes," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145759, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. L. Lambertini & D. Sasaki, 1999. "A Cost-side Analysis on Collusive Sustainability," Working Papers 355, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    8. Etienne Billette de Villemeur & Laurent Flochel & Bruno Versaevel, 2009. "Optimal Collusion with Limited Severity Constraint," Post-Print halshs-00375798, HAL.
    9. Francisco Martínez Sánchez, 2016. "Collusion, Customization and Transparency," Working Papers. Serie AD 2016-03, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    10. Stefano Colombo, 2009. "Sustainability of collusion with imperfect price discrimination and inelastic demand functions," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(3), pages 1687-1694.
    11. Colombo, Stefano, 2013. "Cartels in the unidirectional Hotelling model," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 690-696.
    12. Rasch, Alexander & Herre, Jesko, 2013. "Customer-side transparency, elastic demand, and tacit collusion under differentiation," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 51-59.
    13. Lambertini, Luca & Poddar, Sougata & Sasaki, Dan, 2002. "Research joint ventures, product differentiation, and price collusion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 829-854, June.
    14. MartI´nez-Sánchez, Francisco, 2010. "Avoiding commercial piracy," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 398-408, December.
    15. Francisco Martínez-sánchez, 2012. "Collusion in Software Markets," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(2), pages 1345-1352.
    16. Kresimir Zigic & Jiri Strelicky & Michal Kunin, 2020. "Private and Public IPR Protection in a Vertically Differentiated Software Duopoly," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp671, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    17. Baldelli, Serena & Lambertini, Luca, 2006. "Price vs quantity in a duopoly supergame with Nash punishments," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 121-130, September.
    18. Rasch, Alexander, 2017. "Compatibility, network effects, and collusion," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 39-43.
    19. Rasch, Alexander & Wambach, Achim, 2009. "Internal decision-making rules and collusion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 703-715, November.
    20. Posada, P., 2000. "Cartel Stability and Product Differentiation: How Much Do the Size of the Cartel and the Size of the Industry Matter?," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 556, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General
    • 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
    • L40 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - General
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

    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:taf:apeclt:v:18:y:2011:i:11:p:1043-1047. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEL20 .

    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.