Cost Coordination
研究了企业在合谋时如何通过协调成本报告来维持价格歧视，发现当市场异质性或产品差异化足够大时，协调成本比协调价格更有利可图。
ABSTRACT In markets with price discrimination, firms can face a trade‐off when colluding. To maintain price discrimination, upper‐level executives may have to involve lower‐level employees with the requisite demand information but that enhances the risk of the cartel's discovery. They could instead centralize pricing authority, but that means less price discrimination. Here, we consider a third option, which is for executives to coordinate on inflating the cost used in pricing by lower‐level employees. Coordinating cost reports is shown to be more profitable than coordinating prices when market heterogeneity is sufficiently great or firms' products are sufficiently differentiated.