TY  - JOUR
AU  - Levenstein,Margaret
TI  - Price Wars and the Stability of Collusion: A Study of the Pre-World War I Bromine Industry
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Historical Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 50
PY  - 1993
Y2  - September 1993
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0050
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0050.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Margaret Levenstein
University of Michigan Business School
3201 Davidson Hall
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1234
Tel: (734)615-6352
Fax: 734-936-0279
E-Mail: maggiel@umich.edu
AB  - Bromine producers colluded to raise prices and profits during most of the period between 1885 and 1914.  Collusion was punctuated by price wars in which prices fell sharply.  The characteristics of these price wars are compared with those in the Green-Porter and Abreu- Pearce-Stachetti models.  Some of the bromine price wars resulted from the imperfect monitoring problems in these models.  Those price wars were short and mild.  More severe price wars were part of a bargaining process, in which firms tried to force a renegotiation to a new collusive equilibrium with a different distribution of rents.
ER  -