Do International Roaming Alliances Harm Consumers?
研究了移动运营商在国际漫游市场中的竞争行为，发现运营商通过组建国际联盟来抬高零售价格，最终损害消费者利益。
This paper develops a model of international roaming in which mobile network operators ( MNO 's) compete both on the wholesale market to sell roaming services to foreign operators and on the retail market for subscribers. To allow their subscribers to place or receive calls abroad, they have to buy roaming services provided by foreign MNO 's. In the absence of international alliances, competition between foreign operators would drive wholesale unit prices down to marginal costs. However, international alliances are endogenously formed since they serve as a commitment device to soften competition on the retail market, leading to excessively high roaming per‐call prices.