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Formation des cartels : concepts et application à la différenciation spatiale
Abstract
Résumé
Cet article propose d’analyser le lien entre la stabilité d’un cartel et les problèmes qui ont prévalus à sa formation. Pour cela nous reconsidérons, dans un contexte dissymétrique, les concepts de stabilité proposés à l’origine par d’Aspremont, Jacquemin, Gabszewicz et Weymark [1983]. L’hétérogénéité des agents dans l’industrie nous conduit alors à adopter une approche « individu par individu » permettant de dresser une typologie des participants potentiels à la formation du cartel. Nous illustrons cette analyse conceptuelle par une application à un contexte de différenciation spatiale.
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The consequences of a horizontal merger are typically studied by treating the merger as an exogenous change in market structure
that displaces the initial Cournot equilibrium. In the new equilibrium the merged firm is assumed to behave like a multiplant
Cournot player engaged in a noncooperative game against other sellers. The purpose of this article is to evaluate an unnoticed
comparative-static implication of this approach: some exogenous mergers may reduce the endogenous joint profits of the firms
that are assumed to collude. Cournot's original example is used to illustrate this and other bizarre results that can occur
in the Cournot framework if the market structure is treated as exogenous.
In this article we investigate the incentive to merge when firms that produce differentiated products engage in price competition. We demonstrate that mergers of any size are beneficial and are so increasingly: large mergers yield higher profits than smaller ones. This is in contrast to the result that mergers tend to be disadvantageous in quantity-setting games. This qualitative difference follows from the fact that reaction functions are typically upward sloping in price games but downward sloping in quantity games. Thus, the reaction of outsiders reinforces the initial price increase that results from the merger.
The Chamberlinian monopolistically competitive equilibrium has been explored and extended in a number of recent papers. These analyses have paid only cursory attention to the existence of an industry outside the Chamberlinian group. In this article I analyze a model of spatial competition in which a second commodity is explicitly treated. In this two-industry economy, a zero-profit equilibrium with symmetrically located firms may exhibit rather strange properties. First, demand curves are kinked although firms make "Nash" conjectures. If equilibrium lies at the kink, the effects of parameter changes are perverse. In the short run, prices are rigid in the face of small cost changes. In the long run, increases in costs lower equilibrium prices. Increases in market size raise prices. The welfare properties are also perverse at a kinked equilibrium.
A supergame-theoretic model of collusion is used to analyse the impact of vertical product differentiation on the sustainability of the new retention scheme adopted by most coffee-producing countries in 1993. Taking arabica as the high quality variety and robusta as the low one, theoretical results suggest that: (i) quality-type collusions are more likely to be sustainable when products are highly differentiated while (ii) in the case of a collusion involving all countries (corresponding to the current arrangement on the would coffee market), product differentiation implies opposite effects on the incentive to cheat for low and high quality-producing countries. Product differentiation would deter robusta-producing countries from defecting but strengthen the incentive for arabica-producing countries to cheat. Moreover it appears that the only way to enhance the sustainability of this kind of collusion is to allow arabica-producing countries to set the retention share. In addition, the negative impact of consumer heterogeneity on the sustainability of both kinds of collusion is highlighted.
The gains from cartel formation and the stability of a dominant cartel are investigated for the price-leadership model. We show that there is a general interest in the establishment of a cartel with the competitive fringe reaping a disproportionate share of the benefits. In contrast to results involving a continuum of firms, with a finite number of firms (each with the same cost curve) there is always a stable dominant cartel. /// A propos de la stabilité d'une structure de marché caractérisée par la collusion de firmes dominantes pour établir un leadership de prix. Le mémoire étudie les gains dérivés de la formation d'un cartel et la stabilité d'un cartel dominant dans le cadre d'un modèle de leadership de prix de la firme dominante. On montre qu'il y a un intérêt général à créer un cartel même si les firmes satellites à la périphérie du cartel ramassent une part plus que proportionnelle des bénéfices. Contrairement à ce que l'on observe quand on est en présence d'un continuum de firmes, quand leur nombre est fini -- chacune avec la même courbe de coûts -- il y a toujours un cartel dominant stable.
This paper argues that the sign of external effects of coalition formation provides a useful organizing principle in examining economic coalitions. In many interesting economic games, coalition formation creates eithernegativeexternalities orpositiveexternalities for nonmembers. Examples of negative externalities are research coalitions and customs unions. Examples of positive externalities include output cartels and public goods coalitions. I characterize and compare stable coalition structures under the following three rules of coalition formation: the Open Membership game of Yi and Shin (1995), the Coalition Unanimity game of Bloch (1996), and the Equilibrium Binding Agreements of Ray and Vohra (1994).Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C72, C71.
We define a nation of cartel stability which allows firms to perceive the impact of their actions on overall competitiveness in the market. We demonstrate that in an industry with linear demand and diverse linearly increasing marginal cost functions a stable cartel always exists. Furthermore, we examine uniqueness and size of such cartels as well as the impact of cost and demand conditions on their characteristics. In particular, we establish that the most efficient firms will be in the cartel while the less efficient ones will remain outside.
We study a model in which collusive duopolists divide up the monopoly profit according to their relative bargaining power. We are particularly interested in how the negotiated profit shares depend on the sizes of the firms. If each can produce at the same constant unit cost up to its capacity, we show that the profit per unit of capacity of the small firm is higher than that of the large one. We also study how the ratio of the negotiated profits depends on the size of demand relative to industry capacity, and how this ratio changes with variations in demand.
Equilibrium existence and optimality are analysed in a market for products differentiated by their variety. A game of three stages is analysed. Firms enter in the first stage, choose varieties in the second stage, and choose prices in the third stage. The existence of subgame-perfect equilibria is established. At equilibrium products are symmetrically located in the space of characteristics and are offered at equal prices. The surplus maximizing solution is characterized, and it is shown that surplus maximizing product diversity is lower than the equilibrium one.
The formulation of associations of firms in an oligopoly with linear demand is analyzed as a two-stage noncooperative game. In the first stage, firms form associations in order to decrease their costs, and in the second stage they compete on the market. Examples of associations include R&D joint ventures and groups of firms adopting common standards. In equilibrium, the associations formed exhibit two general features: they are asymmetric and inefficient.
Effective management of international environmental resources requires cooperation, and in practice cooperation is usually codified in international environmental agreements (IEAs). The essential feature of IEAs is that they cannot be enforced by a third party. This paper explores the properties of self-enforcing IEAs using two models. In one, the number of signatories, the terms of the agreement, and the actions of nonsignatories are determined jointly. In the other, the IEA is modeled as an infinitely repeated game, but one which is renegotiation-proof. Both models indicate that IEAs can do little to improve on the noncooperative outcome when the number of countries that share the resource is large. Copyright 1994 by Royal Economic Society.
Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effects of this uncertainty, a stochastic dynamic growth model with the public sector is examined. It is shown that deterministic excessive red tape and corruption deteriorate the growth potential through income redistribution and public sector inefficiencies. Most importantly, it is demonstrated that the increase in corruption via higher uncertainty exerts adverse effects on capital accumulation, thus leading to lower growth rates.
This paper analyzes a sequential game of coalition formation when the division of the coalitional surplus is fixed and the payoffs are defined relative to the whole coalition structure. Gains from cooperation are represented by a valuation which maps coalition structures into payoff vectors. I show that any core stable coalition structure can be attained as a stationary perfect equilibrium of the game. If stationary perfect equilibria may fail to exist in general games, a simple condition is provided under which they exist in symmetric games. Furthermore, symmetric stationary perfect equilibria of symmetric games generate a coalition structure which is generically unique up to a permutation of the players. A general method for the characterization of equilibria in symmetric games is proposed and applied to the formation of cartels in oligopolies and coalitions in symmetric majority games.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers : C78, C71.
In many economic situations, individuals carry out activities as coalitions, and have personal preferences for belonging to specific groups (coalitions). These situations are studied in the framework of cooperative games with coalition structures, by defining for each player a utility function with two arguments, namely his consumption bundle and the coalition to which (s)he belongs. The optimality analysis brings out a surprising property of the games with hedonic coalitions, namely that transfers among coalitions may be necessary to attain Pareto optimality. Moreover, quite restrictive assumptions are needed to rule out this property. The stability analysis is concerned with the conditions under which no individual has incentives and opportunities to change coalitions. Two concepts of "individual stability" of a coalition structure are introduced, and their existence properties are analyzed.
The purpose of this note is to show that the so-called Principle of Minimum Differentiation, as based on Hotelling's 1929 paper "Stability in Competition," is invalid.
Presents a non-cooperative equilibrium concept, applicable to supergames, which fits John Nash's non-cooperative equilibrium and also has some features resembling the Nash cooperative solution. Description of an ordinary game; Definition and discussion of a non-cooperative equilibrium for supergames; Description of supergame and supergame strategies; Information on the Cournot strategy.
Coalition Structures
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Union douanière et coordination des échanges, une approche par la théorie de la stabilité des cartels
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Strategies for the international protection of the environment
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