Market Entry, Fighting Brands, and Tacit Collusion: Evidence from the French Mobile Telecommunications Market
研究法国移动电信市场新进入者后，三家在位运营商推出战斗品牌的行为，发现其难以用单边最优反应解释，而是默契合谋破裂的结果，消费者从品种增加中获益。
We study a major new entry in the French mobile telecommunications market, followed by the introduction of fighting brands by the three incumbents. Using an empirical oligopoly model, we find that the incumbents’ fighting brand strategies are difficult to rationalize as unilateral best responses. Instead, their strategies are consistent with a breakdown of tacit semi-collusion: before entry, the incumbents could successfully coordinate on restricting product variety to avoid cannibalization; after entry, this outcome became harder to sustain because of increased business stealing incentives. Consumers gained considerably from the added variety and, to a lesser extent, from the incumbents’ price responses.