An Institutionalist Explanation of Joint Dominance

World Competition - Law and Economics Review, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 221-226, 2009

6 Pages Posted: 30 Apr 2008 Last revised: 8 Dec 2017

See all articles by Massimiliano Vatiero

Massimiliano Vatiero

University of Trento; Università della Svizzera italiana

Date Written: 2009

Abstract

This article tries to formulate an institutionalist reassessment of the notion of joint dominance, a market situation in which certain firms indirectly synchronize the conduct in a ‘conscious parallelism’. In this article, the concept of joint dominance is treated as an economic common good with the resulting problems of coordination and free riding. We prove, then, that the essence of these problems explains the emergence of economic links between agents involved in a joint dominance. In particular, we define the limit of a joint dominance by the notion of conjectural variations.

Moreover, we distinguish different forms of joint dominance as deriving from the old-institutionalist J.R. Commons’ idea of transaction. We demonstrate that joint dominances composed by vertically related parties and/or by firms and the ‘public authority’ produce the reduction of a contestable Commonsian transaction as well as the horizontal joint dominance.

Keywords: market power, individual and joint dominance

JEL Classification: B15, D43, K21

Suggested Citation

Vatiero, Massimiliano, An Institutionalist Explanation of Joint Dominance (2009). World Competition - Law and Economics Review, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 221-226, 2009, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1125922

Massimiliano Vatiero (Contact Author)

University of Trento ( email )

Via Inama, 5
Trento, Trento 38122
Italy

Università della Svizzera italiana ( email )

Via Giuseppe Buffi, n. 13
Lugano, Ticino 6900
Switzerland

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