Government-leading welfare-improving collusion

We discuss government-leading welfare-improving collusion in a mixed duopoly. We formulate an infinitely repeated game in which a welfare-maximizing firm and a profit-maximizing firm coexist. The government proposes welfare-improving collusion and this is sustainable if both firms have incentives to follow it. We compare two competition structures-Cournot and Bertrand-in this long-run context. We find that Cournot competition yields greater welfare when the discount factor is sufficiently large, whereas Bertrand competition is better when the discount factor is small.