Retailers may enjoy stable cartel rents in their output market through the formation of a buyer group in their input … or rebates. The stability of such an "implied cartel" depends on the retailers' incentives to secretly source from a …

Retailers may enjoy stable cartel rents in their output market through the formation of a buyer group in their input … or rebates. The stability of such an implied cartel depends on the retailers' incentives to secretly source from a …

. We focus on a German coffee producer cartel that colluded under two different regimes: (i) involving wholesale prices in … without resale price maintenance in 2003. The cartel, however, broke down a few months after the announcement. The collusive … overcharge increased to 14% after the introduction of resale price maintenance, and the cartel lasted for a few years. We …

This paper analyses how the endogenous detection of an upstream cartel by a down-stream buyer allows the detecting firm … to raise rivals' cost. We model a market with a vertical structure, where a stable all-inclusive cartel is operating in … cartel, while the existence of the cartel remains unknown to its competitor. The model shows that the detecting firm can …

otherwise have undermined collusion. In other cases, distributors themselves had market power and received a share of cartel … rents in return for their willingness to exercise that power as part of a cartel. This raises questions for antitrust policy … toward vertical restraints in highly concentrated industries or those with a history of cartel activity …

constitute credible threats. Hence, in theory, buyer groups facilitate collusion. We run several experimental treatments using …