An important reason people join communities is to satisfy their identity needs. Firms might exploit this societal tendency to gain competitive advantages and thus stronger economic profits than rivals. By reviewing the strategic approach adopted by Kiehl's, a U.S. cosmetic producer and retailer,...

We investigate whether patents that are jointly held by legally independent companies help sustain product-market collusion. We use a simple model of repeated interactions to show that joint patents can serve collusive purposes. Our model generates two testable predictions: when joint patents...