Collusion with Optimal Information Disclosure
研究了竞争企业通过第三方定价算法共享市场信息时，中介如何选择性披露需求或成本信息以最大化合谋利润，发现最优策略是上限审查披露，导致价格刚性并损害消费者福利。
Abstract Motivated by recent concerns surrounding the use of third-party pricing algorithms by competing firms, we study repeated Bertrand competition where market demand or the cost of serving the market is observed by an intermediary (or “algorithm”) that selectively discloses demand or cost information to maximize firms’ collusive profit. We show that an upper censorship disclosure policy is optimal, which leads to price rigidity and supra-monopoly prices in some states. Improving the algorithm’s accuracy reduces expected consumer surplus whenever it does so under monopoly pricing. When the state is positively correlated over time, the algorithm discloses more information when recent demand was lower or costs were higher. The analysis extends to a generalized model that accommodates product differentiation and capacity constraints. We relate our findings to recent antitrust cases.