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Chapter 27: Q. 1- For Critical Thinking (page 619)

Why do you suppose that assigning market shares, regions, or customers and exchanging sales information are the most common means of coordinating collusion?

Short Answer

Expert verified

Collusion is indeed a non-competitive, secretive, and sometimes illegal agreement between competitors to disrupt market equilibrium. This may include: consented to raise consumer prices, supplier-retailer deals, and monopoly pricing, in which retailers band with each other to reduce the amount paid to suppliers.

Step by step solution

01

Introduction.

When an individual or organization decides to satisfy a need or urge by exchanging money, goods, or services, an exchange process occurs. It's as simple as that, and you engage in exchange relationships all the time.

02

Coordinating collusion.

Complicity is a non-competitive, secretive, and sometimes illegal agreement between competitors to disrupt market equilibrium.

Collusion occurs when people or businesses that would normally compete with one another conspire to work together just to gain unfair market advantage.

03

Reason for Coordinating collusion.

Collusion allows firms to increase profits at the expense of consumers while decreasing market competitiveness.

This could include:

  • Agreeing to raise prices for consumers.
  • Suppliers and retailers make deals.
  • Monopoly pricing occurs when retailers band together to reduce the amount paid to suppliers.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

An years past, firms around the world have secretly engaged in collusive agreements to restrain production and push prices above competitive levels.

Evidence compiled by government officials investigating such agreements has revealed that conspiring firms often utilize similar methods of establishing and enforcing collusive restraints of trade. Most agreements, for instance, assign to each firm an allowed market share, a permitted region of operations, or an approved set of customers. In addition, participating firms commonly are required to exchange sales information so that they can monitor adherence to their agreements to restrain trade. In this chapter, you will learn why firms that typically utilize these techniques to formulate and maintain collusive agreements engage in secret conspiracies: Such agreements are illegal under U.S. antitrust laws.

Recognize the practical difficulties in regulating the prices charged by natural monopolies

Why do you suppose that nearly all of the world's antitrust authorities agree that collusive conspiracies to restrain trade and fix prices are illegal?

Suppose that in panel (a) of Figure 27-2, the vertical distances to points F and A are \(10per unit and \)2per unit, and Qm is 1,000units. To measure the degree of monopoly power, economists often examine the differential between price and marginal cost as a percentage of the price. What would be the value of this measure of monopoly power for the natural monopolist depicted in panel (a) of the figure?

Consider the following fictitious sales data (in thousands of dollars) for both e-books and physical books. Firms have numbers instead of names, and Firm 1generates only e-book sales. Suppose that antitrust authorities' initial evaluation of whether a single firm may possess "monopoly power" is whether its share of sales in the relevant market exceeds 70percent.

a. Suppose that the antitrust authorities determine that selling physical books and e-book selling are individually separate relevant markets. Does an initial evaluation suggest that any single firm has monopoly power, as defined by the antitrust authorities?

b. Suppose that in fact there is really only a single book industry, in which firms compete in selling both physical books and e-books. According to the antitrust authorities' initial test of the potential for monopoly power, is there actually cause for concern?

As noted in the chapter, separating the production of electricity from its delivery has led to considerable deregulation of producers.

a. Briefly explain which of these two aspects of the sale of electricity remains susceptible to natural monopoly problems.

b. Suppose that the potential natural monopoly problem you identified in part (a) actually arises. Why is marginal cost pricing not a feasible solution? What makes average cost pricing a feasible solution?

c. Discuss two approaches that a regulator could use to try to implement an average-cost-pricing solution to the problem identified in part (a).

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