Multimarket Contact and Collusive Behavior

B. Douglas Bernheim and Michael Whinston

RAND Journal of Economics, 1990, vol. 21, issue 1, 1-26

Abstract: Traditional analyses of industrial behavior typically link the exercise of market power in an industry to internal features such as demand conditions, concentration, and barriers-to-entry. Nevertheless, some economists have remained concerned that external factors, such as contact across markets, may also play a significant role in determining the level of competitiveness in any particular industry. In this article, we examine the effect of multimarket contact on the degree of cooperation that firms can sustain in settings of repeated competition. We isolate conditions under which multimarket contact facilitates collusion and show that these collusive gains are achieved through modes of behavior that have been identified in previous empirical studies of multimarket firms.

Date: 1990
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (543)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0741-6261%2819902 ... O%3B2-X&origin=repec full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

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:rje:randje:v:21:y:1990:i:spring:p:1-26

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://editorialexp ... i-bin/rje_online.cgi

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in RAND Journal of Economics from The RAND Corporation
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().