Gentlemanly Price-Fixing and Its Limits: Collusion and Competition in the U.S. Explosives Industry during the Civil War Era
研究了内战时期美国炸药行业寡头企业试图在商业和军事市场固定价格的行为，发现小企业竞争和销售代理问题削弱了合谋，但代理问题反而通过提供外部借口维持了合作基础，而军事市场的成功合谋也因政府作为苛刻买家而利润有限。
During the Civil War era, when the U.S. explosives industry was already dominated by a handful of firms, the leading manufacturers of black powder tried repeatedly–with mixed success–to fix prices in commercial and military markets. Their surviving correspondence reveals some of the dynamics of oligopolistic collusion and competition. In commercial markets, price-fixing by leading explosives makers was undermined not only by competition from small powder manufacturers but also by rivalry among their own selling agents. The same agency problems that made price-fixing more difficult, however, may have actually made it easier for manufacturers to sustain the social foundations of cooperation by allowing them to blame the failures of their agreements on forces outside their control. Maintaining cooperative relations over the long run proved useful to manufacturers in wartime military markets, in which price agreements were easier to sustain. But during the Civil War, the leading powder producers found that even successful collusion in the military supply business did not guarantee high profits, because government bureaus could prove to be demanding consumers.