Market power arises in many posted-offer markets and drives a distinction between the competitive prediction and the Nash equilibrium for the market viewed as a stage game. Pricing patterns in such markets tend to be characterized by Edgeworth cycles that deteriorate as the sessions progress....

Even when markets seem to alternate between collusive and non-collusive phases, the price differences are difficult to interpret since a breakdown in collusion may be caused by a demand decrease that would have reduced prices in any case. This makes the laboratory an ideal setting to study...

Many aspects of antitrust policy are influenced by the possibility that sellers in concentrated markets may have the power to raise prices above competitive levels. Of course, anyone can raise prices, so the issue is whether a change in structure, e.g., a merger, will allow one or more sellers...

This chapter illustrates a mechanism capable of competitively allocating power through an electricity network in which loop flow and the unusual economic phenomenon caused by loop flow are anticipated and integrated into the competitive process. At the base of the complexity is Kirchoff's law...

Theoretically, it is not the case that markets will necessarily equilibrate even when the equilibrium is a unique, interior equilibrium. In his example prices always orbit around the equilibrium and thus never converge. That platform thus provides the starting point of the research. For the...

The experiments reported in this chapter explore the interaction of networks of markets. The issue is whether, and how long, chains of markets separated in time, space and participants might behave. The setting can be interpreted in two different ways. One is a system of vertical markets in...

The fundamental question addressed by this research is the degree to which the classical law of comparative advantage can be observed operating in experimental markets. The law holds that the local economic environments systematically influence, if not completely dictate, patterns of...

The experimental work demonstrates that markets have the capacity to collect information through a process of equilibration and that fact suggests the feasibility of creating a system of markets that have only a purpose of gathering information. The laboratory work suggests that theory and...

First, market prices can exhibit the type of instability predicted by classical dynamic models. Second, the conditions under which instability is observed are not captured by the cobweb model but such conditions are captured by models of the form developed by Marshall and Walras in which the...

The classical discussion of the consequences of non-convexities took a new form as principles of game theory became joined with the structural features of large economies of scale. New models suggest that the threat of competition, as opposed to the existence of an actual competitor, serve to...