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Trade Costs and Multimarket Collusion

Article
Author/s: 
Eric W. Bond and Constantinos Syropoulos
The RAND Journal of Economics
Issue number: 
4
Year: 
2008
Journal pages: 
080-1104
PDF [1]
Contrary to conventional wisdom, this article argues that trade liberalization may facilitate collusion and reduce welfare. With the help of a duopoly model in which firms interact repeatedly in multiple markets, we first show that, if trade costs (i.e., tariffs/transport costs) and discount factors are not too high, efficient cartel agreements necessitate the cross-hauling of goods, as that entails lower deviation incentives. In this setting, we then demonstrate that reciprocal trade liberalization always raises total output when trade costs are within a range whose lower bound exceeds a threshold level, but may reduce total output (and thus be pro-collusive) when trade costs are below that threshold level.

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Links
[1] http://www.economics.uci.edu/files/economics/docs/thdworkshop/sp08/syropoulos.pdf