Optimal collusion under imperfect monitoring in multimarket contact

We investigate optimal collusion in repeated multimarket contact under imperfect public monitoring, where two firms operate in m markets and in each market, each firm's decision and public signals are binary. We show that in an optimal pure strategy strongly symmetric perfect public equilibrium, the size of efficiency loss is equal to that in the market with the most tempting deviation under single-market contact. Furthermore, we show a sufficient condition under which the symmetric equilibrium is optimal for joint payoff maximization among any perfect public equilibrium. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.