Multi-Market Contact in International Trade; Evidence from U.S. Battery Exporters

James R. Boohaker

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: When competitors compete in more than one market they are said to have multi-market contact (MMC). Firms with MMC are more likely collude to avoid cross-market retaliation. This paper investigates the impact of MMC among U.S. battery exporters on the prices they set in foreign markets using confidential export transaction data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. The ability of firms to exploit MMC for collusive gain in international markets can be both detrimental to import-dependent consumers and harder for anti-trust authorities to detect. Motivated by litigation finding evidence of collusive behavior by multi-national battery manufacturers, MMC has an upward effect on export prices set by U.S. battery exporters. These results are robust across different panel regression specifications using different measures of MMC.

Keywords: multi-market contact; oligopoly; export prices; collusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 F12 F13 F14 L13 L14 L40 L63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-ind
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https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/ces/CES-WP-25-32.pdf First version, 2025 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:25-32

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