Does multimarket contact facilitate tacit collusion? Inference on conduct parameters in the airline industry
利用灵活的寡头行为模型，发现多市场接触少的航空公司不合作定价，而接触多的则近乎完美协调，且边际接触仅在低水平时起作用。
We provide empirical evidence that multimarket contact facilitates tacit collusion among airlines using a flexible model of oligopolistic behavior, where conduct parameters are modelled as functions of multimarket contact. We find (i) carriers with little multimarket contact do not cooperate in setting fares, whereas carriers serving many markets simultaneously sustain almost perfect coordination; (ii) cross‐price elasticities play a crucial role in determining the impact of multimarket contact on equilibrium fares; (iii) marginal changes in multimarket contact matter only at low or moderate levels of contact; (iv) assuming firms behave as Bertrand‐Nash competitors leads to biased estimates of marginal costs.