Rules, Communication, and Collusion: Narrative Evidence from the Sugar Institute Case
通过糖业精炼卡特尔周会的详细记录，展示沟通如何帮助企业合谋，并指出现有合谋理论的不足。研究发现，糖业协会不直接定价或限产，而是通过统一商业惯例使降价更透明，同时利用会议解释协议、协调行动、避免误判，但作弊行为仍会发生且仅引发有限报复。
Detailed notes on weekly meetings of the sugar-refining cartel show how communication helps firms collude, and so highlight the deficiencies in the current formal theory of collusion. The Sugar Institute did not fix prices or output. Prices were increased by homogenizing business practices to make price cutting more transparent. Meetings were used to interpret and adapt the agreement, coordinate on jointly profitable actions, ensure unilateral actions were not misconstrued as cheating, and determine whether cheating had occurred. In contrast to established theories, cheating did occur, but sparked only limited retaliation, partly due to the contractual relations with selling agents.