Wharton’s Collusion Paper Is Just How Markets Work: Aaron Brown

Researchers Winston Wei Dou, Itay Goldstein and Yan Ji manage to use variants of the word “collusion” 322 times in the 44 jargon-filled pages of “AI-Powered Trading, Algorithmic Collusion, and Price Efficiency.” To collude is to have a secret agreement, with a connotation of wrongdoing. But at the very beginning of their paper, in the abstract, the authors deny any “agreement, communication, or intent.”

How can you have secret agreements without agreements? How can you have wrongdoing without intent?

The authors, who are affiliated with The Wharton School and the Hong Kong University of Science and ...