English

Cartel Stability under Quality Differentiation

Theoretical Economics 2018-12-27 v1

Abstract

This note considers cartel stability when the cartelized products are vertically differentiated. If market shares are maintained at pre-collusive levels, then the firm with the lowest competitive price-cost margin has the strongest incentive to deviate from the collusive agreement. The lowest-quality supplier has the tightest incentive constraint when the difference in unit production costs is sufficiently small.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.10293,
  title  = {Cartel Stability under Quality Differentiation},
  author = {Iwan Bos and Marco Marini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.10293},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

17 pages, including 3 additional Appendices

R2 v1 2026-06-23T06:56:15.514Z