Stability likelihood of coalitions in a two-stage cartel game: An estimation method

Existing formulations of a cartel game aim at finding stable coalitions, i.e. a coalition is labelled stable or not stable. Uncertainty about the underlying structure and/or parameter values gives rise to sensitivity or uncertainty analysis. In this paper we follow a probabilistic robustness concept: What is the probability a product, design or policy really fulfils the requirements or properties it is expected to. Following this idea, we introduce the concept of stability likelihood: What is the probability a coalition can be labelled as stable. Methods are described based on Monte Carlo Simulation and Directional Simulation to estimate such a probability and we illustrate the performance for several cases.