Maintaining Privacy in Cartels
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10179653 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Takuo Sugaya (0000-0001-5104-5469, Stanford University), Alexander Wolitzky (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 126 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 2569-2607 |
| Publication date | 2018-08-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Political Economy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3808 • E-ISSN: 1537-534X |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/699975 |
| OpenAlex | W2886778455 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 45 |
It is conventional wisdom that transparency in cartels—monitoring of competitors' prices, sales, and profits—facilitates collusion. However, in several recent cases cartels have instead worked to preserve the privacy of their participants' actions and outcomes. Toward explaining this behavior, we show that cartels can sometimes sustain higher profits when actions and outcomes are observed only privately, because better information can hinder collusion by helping firms devise more profitable deviations from the collusive agreement. We provide conditions under which maintaining privacy is optimal for cartels that follow a market-segmentation strategy
Business · Cartel · Collusion · Competitor analysis · Computer security · Economics · Industrial organization · Microeconomics · Transparency (behavior · Auction Theory and Applications · Computer Science · Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing · Marketing · Merger and Competition Analysis
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2023 (6) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |