Oblivious Learning and Collusive Pricing

Excerpt

arXiv:2606.05363v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: On a platform with many sellers, should a pricing algorithm explicitly model competitors' prices when learning demand? Classical arguments suggest that ignoring competitors induces model misspecification and inefficiency, yet findings from algorithmic collusion suggest that ignoring competitor prices may, surprisingly, facilitate collusive outcomes and improve profits. We study this problem in a competitive market with unknown noisy deman