Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/104393 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
Munich Discussion Paper No. 2013-8
Publisher: 
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Volkswirtschaftliche Fakultät, München
Abstract: 
Tacit collusion reduces welfare comparably to explicit collusion but remains mostly unaddressed by antitrust enforcement which greatly depends on evidence of explicit communication. We propose to target specific elements of firms’ behavior that facilitate tacit collusion by providing quantitative evidence that links these actions to an anticompetitive market outcome. We apply our approach to incidents on the Italian gasoline market where the market leader unilaterally announced its commitment to a policy of sticky pricing and large price changes which facilitated price alignment and coordination of price changes. Antitrust policy has to distinguish such active promotion of a collusive strategy from passive (best response) alignment. Our results imply the necessity of stronger legal instruments which target unilateral conduct that aims at bringing about collusion.
Subjects: 
antitrust law
tacit collusion
oligopolistic competition
gasoline market
JEL: 
K21
K42
L13
L71
L41
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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