Empirical study of collusion

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18H03643
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 7:Economics, business administration, and related fields
• Research Institution: Kindai University
• Principal Investigator: nakabayashi jun 近畿大学, 経済学部, 准教授 (30565792)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 広瀬 要輔 明治学院大学, 経済学部, 助教 (10761398) ; 西脇 雅人 大阪大学, 経済学研究科, 准教授 (80599259)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: 談合 / 繰り返しゲーム / 識別

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We conducted theoretical and empirical analyses of bid rigging by collecting the bidding results of public works projects by more than 1,700 local governments across Japan to construct an unprecedentedly large data set and. Specifically, 1) we proposed a new method to identify collusion from the data, and 2) we used quasi-experiments and other statistical methods to verify how collusion is established, maintained, and collapse, suggested in theoretical studies of repeated games. It is expected to open up a new field of practice where competition authorities and corporate compliance departments can screen data for collusion. In addition, the results of 2) can be fed back to the theoretical analysis of repetitive games to further develop theoretical research, which is expected to be applied to the design of bidding systems to deter bid-rigging.

Free Research Field

産業組織

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

1）で提案した談合の識別手法は、企業ごとの談合参加の有無などに関して、既存の手法よりも高い精度で判定することができ、競争当局や企業のコンプライアンス部門が談合をデータからスクリーニングするという新たな実務分野を開拓することが期待される。また2）については、その結果を繰り返しゲームの理論分析にフィードバックすることを通じて、理論研究を一層発展させることが可能となり、さらには談合を抑止する入札制度設計に応用されることが期待される。