Algorithmic Pricing and the Collusion Question

Independent pricing algorithms, given nothing but a profit signal and no way to communicate, learned to charge high prices and punish each other for undercutting. Nobody programmed them to. This path builds the mechanics of pricing software from revenue management to reinforcement learning, works through the simulation results that started the field and the punishment strategies they uncovered, weighs the German fuel-market evidence against serious arguments that the findings are fragile, and ends at a legal system built to catch people agreeing in rooms.