Collusion, firm numbers and asymmetries revisited [Bergen] Luke Garrod Matthew Olczak 2134/21259 https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/conference_contribution/Collusion_firm_numbers_and_asymmetries_revisited_Bergen_/9494375 In an infinitely repeated game where market demand is uncertain and where firms with (possibly asymmetric) capacity constraints must monitor the agreement through their privately observed sales and prices, we analyse the firms’ incentives to form a cartel when they could alternatively collude tacitly. In this private monitoring setting, tacit collusion involves price wars on the equilibrium path if a firm cannot infer from its low sales whether the realisation of market demand was unluckily low or whether at least one rival has undercut the collusive price. In contrast, explicit collusion involves firms secretly forming an illegal cartel to share their private information to avoid such price wars, but this runs the risk of sanctions. We show, in contrast to the conventional wisdom and consistent with the empirical evidence, that the incentives to form an illegal cartel can be smallest in markets with a few symmetric firms, because tacit collusion is most successful in such market 2016-05-17 12:35:53 Cartel Tacit collusion Imperfect monitoring Capacity constraints Economics not elsewhere classified