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Full-Text Articles in Industrial Organization
Competition Policy And The Technologies Of Information, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Competition Policy And The Technologies Of Information, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
When we speak about information and competition policy we are usually thinking about oral or written communications that have an anticompetitive potential, and mainly in the context of collusion of exclusionary threats. These are important topics. Indeed, among the most difficult problems that competition policy has had to confront over the years is understanding communications that can be construed as either threats to exclude or as offers to collude or facilitators of collusion.
My topic here, however, is the relationship between information technologies and competition policy. Technological change can both induce and undermine the use of information to facilitate anticompetitive …
Cartelization Through Buyer Groups, Chris Doyle, Martijn Han
Cartelization Through Buyer Groups, Chris Doyle, Martijn Han
Martijn A. Han
Retailers may enjoy stable cartel rents in their output market through the formation of a buyer group in their input market. A buyer group allows retailers to commit credibly to increased input prices, which serve to reduce combined final output to the monopoly level; increased input costs are then refunded from suppliers to retailers through slotting allowances or rebates. The stability of such an ‘implied cartel’ depends on the retailers’ incentives to source their inputs secretly from a supplier outside of the buyer group arrangement at lower input prices. Cheating is limited if retailers sign exclusive dealing or minimum purchase …