HOW MARKET FRAGMENTATION CAN FACILITATE COLLUSION
研究发现，在受监管市场自由化前，经济学家建议碎片化产能以接近完全竞争，但这一直觉在合谋下失效：碎片化反而促进合谋、提高可持续的合谋价格，解释了英国电力行业产能碎片化未降低价格成本差的现象。
Economists have recommended the fragmentation of capacities before regulated markets are liberalized because static oligopoly models imply that outcomes approximate perfect competition with a fragmented enough market structure. This intuition fails under collusion. When individual firms are capacity constrained relative to total demand, the fragmentation of capacity facilitates collusion and increases the highest sustainable collusive price. Collusive outcomes remain feasible even for arbitrarily fragmented capacity. These results can explain the finding in Sweeting (2007 , Economic Journal , 117, 654–685), that dramatic fragmentation of generation capacity in the English electricity industry did not reduce price cost margins.