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Authors:

  • Benjamin Roth
Social norms have been shown to facilitate anti-competitive behavior in decentralized markets. We demonstrate these norms can also reduce aggregate profits. First, we present descriptive evidence of competition-suppressing norms in Kolkata vegetable markets. We then report on a market-level experiment in which we induced a temporary relaxation of these norms by subsidizing some vendors to sell additional produce. Our intervention raised profits at the market level by over 60%, excluding the subsidy. Nevertheless, after the subsidy ended vendors largely stopped selling the additional produce. Our results suggest anti-competitive norms may partially explain the pervasiveness of small-scale firms in developing countries.

Citations

Banerjee, Abhijit, Greg Fischer, Dean Karlan, Matt Lowe and Benjamin N. Roth. 2022. Do Collusive Norms Maximize Profits? Evidence from a Vegetable Market Experiment in India. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER Working Paper No. 30360), (August). https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30360/w30360.pdf