Isn’t this a classic commitment race/equilibrium selection thing where it’s just unclear what ‘should’ happen if everyone involved is following one of these decision theories? The customers can coordinate to boycott anyone involved in price fixing
I think that’s true (if LDT applied to humans), but what we actually see is that oligopolies sometimes coordinate causally to price fix (occasionally leaving evidence behind in the form of secret meetings, paper trails, etc.) and consumers almost never coordinate (either causally or acausally) to boycott pricing fixing. This seems to strongly suggest that LDT does not apply to humans, otherwise oligopolies wouldn’t need to do it the legally risky way, and/or we’d see more acausally coordinated boycotts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyers_club, and the far less legible “get a group together to buy wholesale” ideas are not new or uncommon. Artificial monopsony (all/most consumers acting as one) is pretty rare, but much like the other direction, doesn’t require perfection to be worthwhile.
Isn’t this a classic commitment race/equilibrium selection thing where it’s just unclear what ‘should’ happen if everyone involved is following one of these decision theories? The customers can coordinate to boycott anyone involved in price fixing
I think that’s true (if LDT applied to humans), but what we actually see is that oligopolies sometimes coordinate causally to price fix (occasionally leaving evidence behind in the form of secret meetings, paper trails, etc.) and consumers almost never coordinate (either causally or acausally) to boycott pricing fixing. This seems to strongly suggest that LDT does not apply to humans, otherwise oligopolies wouldn’t need to do it the legally risky way, and/or we’d see more acausally coordinated boycotts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyers_club, and the far less legible “get a group together to buy wholesale” ideas are not new or uncommon. Artificial monopsony (all/most consumers acting as one) is pretty rare, but much like the other direction, doesn’t require perfection to be worthwhile.