Hidden collusion by decentralization: firm organization and antitrust policy

Emilie Dargaud and Armel Jacques

Journal of Economics, 2015, vol. 114, issue 2, 153-176

Abstract: This paper develops a theory of the centralization of firms engaged in multi-market collusive agreements. A centralized organization (called the unitary or U-form) allows price coordination across several markets, whereas with decentralized (the multidivisional or M-form) firms the probability that the antitrust authority will find evidence of collusion on one market while investigating the other is lower. We show that the firm’s choice of internal structure depends to a large extent on product substitutability and the instruments used by the antitrust authority. Copyright Springer-Verlag Wien 2015

Keywords: Antitrust policy; Collusion; Organizational design; M-form; U-form; L22; L41; K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00712-013-0386-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Hidden collusion by decentralization: firm organization and antitrust policy (2015)
Working Paper: Hidden collusion by decentralization: firms' organization and antitrust policy (2013)
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:kap:jeczfn:v:114:y:2015:i:2:p:153-176

DOI: 10.1007/s00712-013-0386-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economics is currently edited by Giacomo Corneo

More articles in Journal of Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().