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In the rapidly evolving landscape of eCommerce, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based pricing algorithms, particularly those utilizing Reinforcement Learning (RL), are becoming increasingly prevalent. This rise has led to an inextricable…
Nowadays, a significant share of the Business-to-Consumer sector is based on online platforms like Amazon and Alibaba and uses Artificial Intelligence for pricing strategies. This has sparked debate on whether pricing algorithms may tacitly…
The rise of algorithmic pricing in online retail platforms has attracted significant interest in how autonomous software agents interact under competition. This article explores the potential emergence of algorithmic collusion -…
Collusion in market pricing is a concept associated with human actions to raise market prices through artificially limited supply. Recently, the idea of algorithmic collusion was put forward, where the human action in the pricing process is…
Nowadays, a significant share of the business-to-consumer sector is based on online platforms like Amazon and Alibaba and uses AI for pricing strategies. This has sparked debate on whether pricing algorithms may tacitly collude to set…
Algorithmic price collusion facilitated by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms raises significant concerns. We examine how AI agents using Q-learning engage in tacit collusion in two-sided markets. Our experiments reveal that AI-driven…
Artificial intelligence algorithms are increasingly used by firms to set prices. Previous research shows that they can exhibit collusive behaviour, but how quickly they can do so has so far remained an open question. I show that a modern…
Pricing algorithms have demonstrated the capability to learn tacit collusion that is largely unaddressed by current regulations. Their increasing use in markets, including oligopolistic industries with a history of collusion, calls for…
When online sellers use AI learning algorithms to automatically compete on e-commerce platforms, there is concern that they will learn to coordinate on higher than competitive prices. However, this concern was primarily raised in…
This study investigates the implications of algorithmic pricing in digital marketplaces, focusing on Airbnb's pricing dynamics. With the advent of Airbnb's new pricing tool, this research explores how digital tools influence hosts' pricing…
This paper examines how the observability of demand shocks influences pricing patterns and market outcomes when firms delegate pricing decisions to Q-learning algorithms. Simulations show that demand observability induces Q-learning agents…
Algorithmic pricing on online e-commerce platforms raises the concern of tacit collusion, where reinforcement learning algorithms learn to set collusive prices in a decentralized manner and through nothing more than profit feedback. This…
Autonomous pricing algorithms are increasingly influencing competition in digital markets; however, their behavior under realistic demand conditions remains largely unexamined. This paper offers a thorough analysis of four pricing…
Pricing decisions are increasingly made by AI. Thanks to their ability to train with live market data while making decisions on the fly, deep reinforcement learning algorithms are especially effective in taking such pricing decisions. In…
As algorithms increasingly mediate competitive decision-making, their influence extends beyond individual outcomes to shaping strategic market dynamics. In two preregistered experiments, we examined how algorithmic advice affects human…
Recent scholarly work has extensively examined the phenomenon of algorithmic collusion driven by AI-enabled pricing algorithms. However, online platforms commonly deploy recommender systems that influence how consumers discover and purchase…
This paper examines how data inputs shape competition among artificial intelligences (AIs) in pricing games. The dataset assigns labels to consumers and divides them into different markets, thereby inducing multimarket contact among AIs. We…
The prospect of collusive agreements being stabilized via the use of pricing algorithms is widely discussed by antitrust experts and economists. However, the literature is often lacking the perspective of computer scientists, and seems to…
There has been substantial recent concern that pricing algorithms might learn to ``collude.'' Supra-competitive prices can emerge as a Nash equilibrium of repeated pricing games, in which sellers play strategies which threaten to punish…
Firms' algorithm development practices are often homogeneous. Whether firms train algorithms on similar data, aim at similar benchmarks, or rely on similar pre-trained models, the result is correlated predictions. We model the impact of…