IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/saq/wpaper/22-20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Collusion in Quality-Segmented Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Iwan Bos

    (Department of Organisation, Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Maastricht University)

  • Marco A. Marini

    (Department of Social Sciences and Economics, Sapienza University of Rome)

Abstract

This paper analyzes price collusion in a repeated game with two submarkets; a standard and a premium quality segment. Within this setting, we study four types of price-?xing agreement: (i) a segment-wide cartel in the premium submarket only, (ii) a segment-wide cartel in the standard submarket only, (iii) two segment-wide cartels, and (iv) an industry-wide cartel. We present a complete characterization of the collusive pricing equilibrium and examine the corresponding e¤ect on market shares and welfare. Partial cartels operating in a su¢ ciently large segment lose market share and the industry-wide cartel prefers to maintain market shares at pre-collusive levels. The impact on consumer and social welfare critically depends on the cost of producing quality. Moreover, given that there is a cartel, more collusion can be bene?cial for society as a whole.

Suggested Citation

  • Iwan Bos & Marco A. Marini, 2020. "Collusion in Quality-Segmented Markets," Working Papers 22/20, Sapienza University of Rome, DISS.
    • Handle: RePEc:saq:wpaper:22/20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.diss.uniroma1.it/sites/default/files/allegati/DiSSE_Bos_Marini_wp22_2020.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bos, Iwan & Marini, Marco A., 2019. "Cartel stability under quality differentiation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 70-73.
    2. Luis C. Corchón & Marco A. Marini (ed.), 2018. "Handbook of Game Theory and Industrial Organization, Volume II," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 17978.
    3. Giulio Ecchia & Luca Lambertini, 1997. "Minimum Quality Standards and Collusion," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 101-113, March.
    4. Sergio Currarini & Marco A. Marini, 2015. "Coalitional Approaches to Collusive Agreements in Oligopoly Games," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 83(3), pages 253-287, June.
    5. Bonnet, Céline & Bouamra-Mechemache, Zohra, 2019. ""Yogurt Cartel" of Private Label Providers in France: impact on prices and welfare," TSE Working Papers 19-1012, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    6. Luis C. Corchón & Marco A. Marini (ed.), 2018. "Handbook of Game Theory and Industrial Organization, Volume I," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 16873.
    7. Roos, Nicolas de & Smirnov, Vladimir, 2021. "Collusion, price dispersion, and fringe competition," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    8. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2006. "How Do Cartels Operate?," Economics Working Paper Archive 531, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    9. Donsimoni, Marie-Paule, 1985. "Stable heterogeneous cartels," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 451-467, December.
    10. Filomena Garcia & Jose Manuel Paz y Miño & Gustavo Torrens, 2020. "The merger paradox, collusion, and competition policy," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(6), pages 2051-2081, December.
    11. Avner Shaked & John Sutton, 1982. "Relaxing Price Competition Through Product Differentiation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(1), pages 3-13.
    12. Bos, Iwan & Marini, Marco A. & Saulle, Riccardo D., 2020. "Cartel formation with quality differentiation," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 36-50.
    13. Marco A. Marini, 2018. "Collusive agreements in vertically differentiated markets," Chapters, in: Luis C. Corchón & Marco A. Marini (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory and Industrial Organization, Volume II, chapter 3, pages 34-56, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Mussa, Michael & Rosen, Sherwin, 1978. "Monopoly and product quality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 301-317, August.
    15. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, December.
    16. Jaskold Gabszewicz, J. & Thisse, J. -F., 1979. "Price competition, quality and income disparities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 340-359, June.
    17. Iwan Bos & Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2010. "Endogenous cartel formation with heterogeneous firms," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(1), pages 92-117, March.
    18. Symeonidis, George, 1999. "Cartel stability in advertising-intensive and R&D-intensive industries," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 121-129, January.
    19. Harrington, Joseph E., 2006. "How Do Cartels Operate?," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 2(1), pages 1-105, August.
    20. Schmitt, Nicolas & Weder, Rolf, 1998. "Sunk costs and cartel formation: Theory and application to the dyestuff industry," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 197-220, August.
    21. 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).
    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. Yangbo Song & Mofei Zhao, 2023. "Cooperative teaching and learning of actions," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(4), pages 1289-1327, November.
    2. Amit Gayer, 2023. "Duopoly and Endogenous Single Product Quality Strategies," Games, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-11, August.

    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. Bos, Iwan & Marini, Marco A. & Saulle, Riccardo D., 2020. "Cartel formation with quality differentiation," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 36-50.
    2. Bos, Iwan & Marini, Marco A., 2019. "Cartel stability under quality differentiation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 70-73.
    3. Bovin, Andreas & Bos, Iwan, 2023. "Market Shares as Collusive Marker: Evidence from the European Truck Industry," Research Memorandum 011, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    4. Gabszewicz Jean J. & Marini Marco A. & Tarola Ornella, 2019. "Endogenous Mergers in Markets with Vertically Differentiated Products," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(1), pages 1-22, January.
    5. Georgios Petropoulos & Thanos Athanasopoulos & Burak Dindaroglu, 2021. "Stability of collusion and quality differentiation- a Nash bargaining approach," Working Papers 43226, Bruegel.
    6. Radoslav Raykov, 2014. "Uncertain Costs and Vertical Differentiation in an Insurance Duopoly," Staff Working Papers 14-14, Bank of Canada.
    7. Leonardo Madio & Aldo Pignataro, 2022. "Collusion sustainability with a capacity constrained firm," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0295, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    8. Leonardo Madio & Aldo Pignataro, 2022. "Collusion Sustainability with a Capacity Constrained Firm," CESifo Working Paper Series 10170, CESifo.
    9. George Deltas & Thanasis Stengos & Eleftherios Zacharias, 2011. "Product line pricing in a vertically differentiated oligopoly," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 44(3), pages 907-929, August.
    10. Cédric Argenton, 2010. "Exclusive Quality," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(3), pages 690-716, September.
    11. Stole, Lars A., 2007. "Price Discrimination and Competition," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 2221-2299, Elsevier.
    12. Ya‐chin Wang & Leonard F.s. Wang, 2009. "Equivalence Of Competition Mode In A Vertically Differentiated Duopoly With Delegation," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 77(4), pages 577-590, December.
    13. Luke Garrod & Matthew Olczak, 2017. "Collusion Under Imperfect Monitoring with Asymmetric Firms," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(3), pages 654-682, September.
    14. C. Benassi & A. Chirco & C. Colombo, 2015. "Beyond the Uniform Distribution: Equilibrium Prices and Qualities in a Vertically Differentiated Duopoly," Working Papers wp1044, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    15. Emanuele Bacchiega & Antonio Minniti & Arsen Palestini, 2016. "Quality, distance and trade: A strategic approach," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95, pages 165-191, March.
    16. Ngo Van Long & Zhuang Miao, 2020. "Multiple‐quality Cournot oligopoly and the role of market size," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 932-952, October.
    17. Gabszewicz, Jean J. & Marini, Marco A. & Tarola, Ornella, 2016. "Core existence in vertically differentiated markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 28-32.
    18. Ying He & Huaxia Rui, 2022. "Probabilistic selling in vertically differentiated markets: The role of substitution," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(11), pages 4191-4204, November.
    19. Garrod, Luke & Olczak, Matthew, 2018. "Explicit vs tacit collusion: The effects of firm numbers and asymmetries," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 1-25.
    20. Peter-J. Jost, 2023. "Price commitment and the strategic launch of a fighter brand," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 381-435, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Partial Cartels; Price Collusion; Market Segmentation; Vertical Di¤erentiation.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance

    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:saq:wpaper:22/20. 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: Pierluigi Montalbano (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dtrosit.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.