Collusion, Customization and Transparency

Francisco Martínez Sánchez ()
Additional contact information
Francisco Martínez Sánchez: Universidad de Alicante
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Francisco Martínez-Sánchez

Working Papers. Serie AD from Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie)

Abstract: We analyze the e¿ect of customizing a product on the ability of firms to tacitly collude on prices when some consumers are not informed about price. Following Bar-Isaac et al. (2014), we allow firms to be located inside the circle in the Salop model (1979). Our analysis shows that the e¿ect of product customization on the stability of collusion depends on the sensitivity of consumers’ utility to the degree of customization. We also obtain that collusion becomes harder to sustain when more consumers are informed about prices. From our welfare analysis, we conclude that the e¿ects of customizing depend on the sensitivity of consumers’ utility to the degree of customization. Finally, we find that transparency has no e¿ect on the equilibrium outcome under collusion. However, at the punishment stage, the e¿ect of transparency is positive on the consumer surplus and negative on the producer surplus. Since these two e¿ects cancel each other out, we obtain that having more informed consumers on prices does not a¿ect welfare.

Keywords: Collusion; Customization; The Salop model; Transparency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D40 L10 L40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cse, nep-ind and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published by Ivie

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ivie.es/downloads/docs/wpasad/wpasad-2016-03.pdf Fisrt version / Primera version, 2016 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2016-03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers. Serie AD from Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Departamento de Edición ().