A general model of information sharing in oligopoly

Under which conditions do oligopolists have an incentive to share private information about a stochastic demand or stochastic costs? We present a general model which encompasses virtually all models of the existing literature on information sharing as special cases. Within this unifying framework we show that in contrast to the apparent inconclusiveness of previous results some simple principles determining the incentives to share information can be obtained. Existing results are generalized, some previous interpretations are questioned, and new explanations offered, leading to a single general theory for a large class of models. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.