Price collusion, rationalisation and Admiralty oversight in British shipbuilding: The case of the Warship Group, 1926–1945

Between 1925 and 1935, several private firms capable of constructing warships, or parts thereof, collapsed, merged or were partly or fully ‘sterilised’ against any return to shipbuilding during a period of ‘rationalisation’ to reduce perceived overcapacity relative to demand in British shipbuilding. Thereafter, rearmament had the opposite effect upon industry; lack of capacity in some key areas created almost unprecedented demand, and led eventually to uncontrolled price collusion and profits, particularly on warship contracts. An investigation into profiteering was undertaken in 1943, which embarrassed the remaining builders and their principal contractors. This article establishes that the Admiralty had allowed a form of price-fixing at taxpayers’ expense to proliferate for some time, a largely unknown episode that spanned the years of disarmament and rearmament. Further, it explains how and why collusion occurred when it did, and discusses the catalytic role of shipyard rationalisation. Finally, we conclude by suggesting reasons for such loose Admiralty control of warship costs during rearmament.

Restrain Price Collusion in Trade-Based Supply Chain Finance

Collusion can increase the transaction value among supply chain members to obtain higher loans from supply chain finance (SCF) service provider, which will bring some serious risks for SCF. However, it is difficult to be identified and restrain the SCF service provider due to its stability and hiddenness. Different SCF transaction structures will affect the profits of supply chain members from collusion. This paper develops various game models for collusion and not collusion for different SCF transaction structures and investigates the impact of SCF transaction structures on the boundary conditions of collusion. Through comparative analysis, the findings of models are as follows: (1) in a two-echelon supply chain, the supplier and retailer are more likely to conduct collusion under the sequential game than under the simultaneous game; (2) collusion in the two-echelon supply chain can obtain higher loans than that in the three-echelon supply chain, so it has more serious hidden danger; (3) in the two-echelon supply chain, collusion is easier to form than in the three-echelon SCF supply chain that has spontaneous endogenous constraints. We also develop two types of mechanisms to restrain collusion behavior from profit sharing and incomplete information perspectives. Finally, we summarize the theoretical implications and analyze the management implications through a case study.

List Price Collusion

Firms sometimes collude by agreeing on increases in list prices. Yet, the efficacy of such list price collusion is subject to discussion as colluding firms might, in principle, deviate secretly from the elevated prices by granting their customers discounts. This article reviews cases of list price collusion in the USA and Europe, and it presents a theory of harm suggesting that a combination of anchoring, orientation on reference points, and loss aversion may render list price collusion effective in raising transaction prices—even if firms set transaction prices in a non-coordinated fashion.

A Qualitative Research Assessment of the MBA for 2020 and Beyond

The Master of Business Administration (MBA) plays a significant role in developing managers in a plethora of global organizations. In most circles, it is considered a degree to develop corporate managers. With the leadership failures of organizations like pharmaceutical price collusion and price increase of 539% of Perrigo Pharmaceuticals, the fake account fraud practices at Wells Fargo, sexual harassment issues at Uber, the Equifax data breach, and the video of a forcible, bloody removal of a passenger on a United Airlines in the U.S., there has been increased criticism concerning the effectiveness of current MBA programs and leadership development in general. This qualitative research study explores how the curriculum of the MBA of the future should look.

Evolutionary dynamics of competition among ports in networks

The competitive relationships among ports become complicated as the consequence of the prosperity of international trade. Typical oligopoly competition models cannot be competent for the analysis of ports competition in real scenario. In this paper, the scale-free network is adopted to characterize the interactions among ports with various number of neighbors. For each port node, not only direct competition but also indirect influences exerted by its neighbor are taken into account. Following the hypothesis in evolutionary game theory, social learning behavior among competitors occurs generally in our model. Conforming to reality, strategies considering both price collusion and price competition are proposed to investigate evolutionary dynamics of competition among ports in the self-organization process of imitation. It shows that neighbors have the same goal but play different roles in affecting strategy transition during the evolution with two competitive means. We explore how evolutionary dynamics are influenced by different imitation means. Then this paper verifies that price collusion is more conducive to port development when abundant resources is provided. Our results obtained in this evolutionary framework with different imitation means may enhance port-operation efficiency.