David Spector

Just like in other industrial countries, cartelization was widespread in France after the 1870 decade. Cartels, and the public policy towards them, were frequently addressed in the public debate. This article deals with the stance taken by French economists on this subject until the Great Depression. Although they were divided in several groups that were in sharp disagreement on most scientific and policy issues, French economists were almost united in their lack of support for anti-cartel policy. The liberal economists’ opposition stemmed from their general hostility to government intervention. Unlike in the English-speaking world, where many economists otherwise critical of government gradually became supportive of antitrust after mounting evidence had revealed the scope of certain kinds of exclusionary behavior, the French liberal economists remained constant in their opposition. The more reform-minded university professors, as well as the sociologists-economists of the Durkheimian school, were unenthusiastic about policies meant to safeguard competition because they viewed ‘excessive’ market competition as destabilizing and wasteful. Finally, the most prominent experts in industrial economics, who were employed by large companies or professional organizations, also advocated a hand-off approach, in accordance with their employers’ preferences.

Many collusive agreements involve the exchange of self-reported sales data between competitors, which use them to monitor compliance with a target market share allocation. Such communication may facilitate collusion even if it is unverifiable cheap talk and the underlying information becomes publicly available with a delay. The exchange of sales information may allow firms to implement incentive-compatible market share reallocation mechanisms after unexpected swings, limiting the recourse to price wars. Such communication may allow firms to earn profits that could not be earned in any collusive, symmetric pure-strategy equilibrium without communication.

When demand is noisy and firms’ costs are uncertain, the availability of market share data increases the accuracy of each firm’s information, and it creates incentives for signaling. Taking both effects into account, we find that under quantity competition with a homogeneous good, the availability of market share data has a positive impact on total surplus and an ambiguous one on consumer surplus. Under price competition with differentiated substitutes, it has a negative impact on consumer surplus and an ambiguous one on total surplus. If the cost difference is small, the effect of first-period signaling dominates the effect of second-period full information. Accordingly, in this case, the availability of market share data causes total and consumer surplus to increase in the case of quantity competition and to decrease in the case of price competition.

Many collusive agreements involve the exchange of self-reported sales data between competitors, which use them to monitor compliance with a target market share allocation. Such communication may facilitate collusion even if it is unverifiable cheap talk and the underlying information becomes publicly available with a delay. The exchange of sales information may allow firms to implement incentive-compatible market share reallocation mechanisms after unexpected swings, limiting the recourse to price wars. Such communication may allow firms to earn profits that could not be earned in any collusive, symmetric pure-strategy equilibrium without communication.

En France, les mécanismes de marché suscitent une aversion plus forte qu ailleurs. Au point de faire naître des alliances inattendues entre la droite et une partie de la gauche, par exemple pour s opposer à la déréglementation de certaines professions (loi Macron) ou à la concurrence entre grands distributeurs (loi Galland). Surtout, plus qu à l étranger, la gauche peine à concilier l adhésion au marché et les aspirations égalitaires. Les ressorts historiques de cette méfiance sont le thème de ce livre. David Spector y mène une enquête minutieuse et passionnante qui nous conduit de la Grande-Bretagne libre-échangiste des années 1840 à la France protectionniste de la Troisième République, de l évolution tumultueuse des lois sur la concurrence aux controverses toujours renouvelées sur la nature de la « science économique », jusqu à l ouverture européenne des dernières décennies.

A number of collusive agreements involve the exchange of self-reported sales data between firms, which use them to monitor compliance with a target market share allocation. This paper shows that such communication between competitors may facilitate collusion even if all private information becomes public after a delay. The exchange of sales information may allow firms to implement incentive-compatible market share reallocation mechanisms after unexpected swings, limiting the recourse to price wars as a tool for mutual disciplining. In some cases, efficient collusion cannot occur unless firms are able to engage in such communication.

In recent decisions, the Commission has taken a hard stance vis-à-vis dominant firms using long-term contracts which, it contended, deterred rivals from effectively competing on relevant markets. Yet long-term contracts may have procompetitive effects pleading in favour of a fine-tuned enforcement.

A joint modelling of objective worlds and subjective perceptions within two-dimensional semantics eliminates the margin for error principle and solves the epistemic sorites paradox. Two objective knowledge modalities can be defined in two-dimensional frames accounting for subjective perceptions: “necessary knowledge” (NK) and “possible knowledge” (PK), the latter being better suited to the interpretation of knowledge utterances. Two-dimensional semantics can in some cases be reduced to one-dimensional ones, by defining accessibility relations between objective worlds that reflect subjective perceptions: NK and PK are respectively equivalent to □□ and ◊□ in some one-dimensional frame, and to □ and another modality in some other.