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Sprint projectOct 25, 2026Hong Kong

Market History Visibility and High Prices in LLM Pricing Agents

Yanduo Yang, Yahan Yang, Zilin Huang · Team TriSpark

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

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Abstract High and similar prices in repeated pricing games may reflect strategic coordination, but they may also arise when agents cannot revise an initial pricing assumption. We examine this distinction in a differentiated-product duopoly with two DeepSeek Flash agents. We compare one 30-round run with a 100-round visible-history window against one run with no visible market history, while retaining persistent private notes in both conditions. With history, prices fall from approximately 2.75, temporarily stabilize near 1.72, and finish at 1.58. Recorded statements describe attempts to maintain or increase prices, but a higher-price convention does not persist. Without history, prices remain at 2.76 and 2.75 throughout the game. Over the final ten rounds, mean per-agent price is 1.698 with history and 2.755 without history, whereas mean profit is 30.066 and 7.805, respectively. The no-history records describe missing market feedback and repeated use of an initial demand assumption. These observations illustrate why high prices alone cannot identify the mechanism behind pricing behavior. The study is exploratory: each condition has only one run, and removing market history simultaneously removes own-outcome feedback and information about the competitor. The findings motivate joint examination of prices, profits, and decision records when evaluating possible algorithmic collusion.

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Cite this project

@misc{yang2026market,
  title = {{Market History Visibility and High Prices in LLM Pricing Agents}},
  author = {Yanduo Yang and Yahan Yang and Zilin Huang},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  note = {Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/market-history-visibility-and-high-prices-in-llm-pricing-agents-rpul}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/market-history-visibility-and-high-prices-in-llm-pricing-agents-rpul}
}

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