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Sprint projectOct 26, 2026Toronto, Canada

Collusion Prevention Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank

Amanda Okonkwo, Destiny Rock · Team Economic and Policy Research Group

Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint. Sprint projects are early-stage work by participants, not Apart Research publications.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) pricing agents can improve firms' pricing decisions but may also sustain prices above competitive levels, raising concerns about algorithmic collusion. While several interventions have been proposed to mitigate this risk, their relative effectiveness and computational costs remain important considerations. This study evaluates three interventions: restricting agents' access to historical pricing information, introducing financial penalties, and replacing one AI seller with a competitive rule-based agent. Using Qwen2.5-32B-Instruct in a repeated-pricing duopoly over 300 rounds, we measure intervention effectiveness through a price-based collusion index and compare computational cost-effectiveness and time-efficiency.

The results indicate that restricting accessible pricing history to 30-rounds achieved the highest estimated cost-effectiveness (1.4104 index units reduced per CAD), while competitive disruption achieved the highest time-efficiency (0.8948 index units reduced per hour). The 25% financial penalty produced the largest absolute reduction in the index. However, removing accessible pricing history entirely increased pricing, suggesting that stricter restrictions do not always yield better outcomes. These findings suggest that relatively simple interventions may reduce elevated pricing at lower computational costs. Nevertheless, the results remain exploratory due to the use of a single random seed, estimated cost allocations, and uncertainty about whether observed pricing behavior reflects sustained collusion.

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Cite this project

@misc{okonkwo2026collusion,
  title = {{Collusion Prevention Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank}},
  author = {Amanda Okonkwo and Destiny Rock},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  note = {Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/collusion-prevention-doesnt-have-to-break-the-bank-6t47}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/collusion-prevention-doesnt-have-to-break-the-bank-6t47}
}

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