AI and Interdependent Pricing: Combination Without Conspiracy?

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds the potential to enhance the ability of competitors to coordinate prices without forming agreements. That could cause widespread market failures. Competitors in a broad range of industries could use AI to cause the same harms brought about horizontal price fixing without triggering legal liability. This Article suggests a solution to this potential problem: adopting the long-contemplated policy of imposing civil liability when competitors achieve supracompetitive prices regardless of whether they enter an agreement to do so.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Antitrust,Technology, Conspiracy, Price Fixing, Parallel Pricing