IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mlb/wpaper/710.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Cost-Side Analysis on Collusive Sustainability

Author

Listed:
  • Lambertini, L.
  • Sasaki, D.

Abstract

In an oligopoly supergame, firms' actions in prices and quantities are subject to non-negativity constraints. These constraints can obstruct the practicability of optimal punishment (a la Abreu (1986), Lambson (1987), and Hackner (1996)) in sustaining tacit collusion. Noting that the prospect of single-period optimal punishment depends indispensably upon firms' ability to charge prices strictly below marginal costs (loss-making pricing), under the presence of positive price constraints, marginal costs can serve as a "fudge" to materialise single-period optimal punishment. In this paper we characterise the effects of profit-cost ratios (or mark-ups) on the sustainability of tacit collusion, in light of optimal punishment.

Suggested Citation

  • Lambertini, L. & Sasaki, D., 1999. "A Cost-Side Analysis on Collusive Sustainability," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 710, The University of Melbourne.
    • Handle: RePEc:mlb:wpaper:710
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Val Eugene Lambson, 1987. "Optimal Penal Codes in Price-setting Supergames with Capacity Constraints," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(3), pages 385-397.
    2. Lambson Val Eugene, 1994. "Some Results on Optimal Penal Codes in Asymmetric Bertrand Supergames," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 444-468, April.
    3. Lambson, Val Eugene, 1995. "Optimal penal codes in nearly symmetric Bertrand supergames with capacity constraints," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 1-22.
    4. 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.
    5. Avinash Dixit, 1979. "A Model of Duopoly Suggesting a Theory of Entry Barriers," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 20-32, Spring.
    6. Rothschild, R., 1992. "On the sustainability of collusion in differentiated duopolies," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 33-37, September.
    7. Ross, Thomas W., 1992. "Cartel stability and product differentiation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 1-13, March.
    8. Abreu, Dilip, 1988. "On the Theory of Infinitely Repeated Games with Discounting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(2), pages 383-396, March.
    9. 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.
    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. Chang, Myong-Hun, 1992. "Intertemporal Product Choice and Its Effects on Collusive Firm Behavior," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 33(4), pages 773-793, November.
    12. Lambertini, Luca, 1997. "Prisoners' Dilemma in Duopoly (Super)Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 181-191, November.
    13. Deneckere, R., 1983. "Duopoly supergames with product differentiation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 11(1-2), pages 37-42.
    14. James W. Friedman & Jacques-Francois Thisse, 1993. "Partial Collusion Fosters Minimum Product Differentiation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 24(4), pages 631-645, Winter.
    15. Hackner, Jonas, 1995. "Endogenous product design in an infinitely repeated game," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 277-299.
    16. Albaek, Svend & Lambertini, Luca, 1998. "Collusion in differentiated duopolies revisited," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 305-308, June.
    17. Abreu, Dilip & Pearce, David & Stacchetti, Ennio, 1986. "Optimal cartel equilibria with imperfect monitoring," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 251-269, June.
    18. Abreu, Dilip, 1986. "Extremal equilibria of oligopolistic supergames," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 191-225, June.
    19. Hackner, Jonas, 1994. "Collusive pricing in markets for vertically differentiated products," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 155-177, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Luca Lambertini, 2000. "Technology and Cartel Stability under Vertical Differentiation," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(4), pages 421-442, November.
    4. Döpper, Hendrik & Rasch, Alexander, 2024. "Combinable products, price discrimination, and collusion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Stefano Colombo, 2009. "Sustainability of collusion with imperfect price discrimination and inelastic demand functions," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(3), pages 1687-1694.
    8. Etienne Billette de Villemeur & Laurent Flochel & Bruno Versaevel, 2009. "Optimal Collusion with Limited Severity Constraint," Post-Print halshs-00375798, HAL.
    9. Stefano Colombo, 2009. "The unidirectional Hotelling model with spatial price discrimination," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(4), pages 3031-3040.
    10. Lambertini, Luca & Poddar, Sougata & Sasaki, Dan, 1998. "Standardization and the stability of collusion," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 303-310, March.
    11. Miklós-Thal, Jeanine, 2008. "Delivered pricing and the impact of spatial differentiation on cartel stability," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1365-1380, November.
    12. Lambertini, Luca & Trombetta, Marco, 2002. "Delegation and firms' ability to collude," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 359-373, April.
    13. Raphael Thomadsen & Ki-Eun Rhee, 2007. "Costly Collusion in Differentiated Industries," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(5), pages 660-665, 09-10.
    14. Colombo, Stefano, 2010. "Product differentiation, price discrimination and collusion," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 18-27, March.
    15. Stefano Colombo, 2011. "Pricing Policy and Partial Collusion," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 325-349, December.
    16. Luca Lambertini & Dan Sasaki, 1999. "Optimal punishments in linear duopoly supergames with product differentiation," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 69(2), pages 173-188, June.
    17. Colombo, Stefano, 2013. "Cartels in the unidirectional Hotelling model," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 690-696.
    18. L. Lambertini & C. Schultz, 2000. "Price vs Quantity in a Repeated Differentiated Duopoly," Working Papers 379, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    19. Osterdal, Lars Peter, 2003. "A note on the stability of collusion in differentiated oligopolies," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 53-64, March.
    20. Stefano Colombo, 2016. "Mixed oligopolies and collusion," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 118(2), pages 167-184, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    OLIGOPOLIES ; MARKET STRUCTURE ; GAME THEORY;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    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:mlb:wpaper:710. 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: Dandapani Lokanathan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/demelau.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.