Recognising collusion indicators
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Collusion happens when parties who are supposed to be acting independently secretly coordinate to produce an outcome that benefits them at someone else's expense, most commonly seen in bid rigging but appearing in many other settings wherever genuine competition can quietly be replaced with a private, undisclosed agreement instead.
Indicators include prices that move together in ways unrelated firms would rarely coincide on by chance, communication patterns between supposed competitors that have no other obvious business explanation, and bidding behaviour that looks deliberately choreographed rather than genuinely independent, such as one firm consistently bidding just above another firm's winning price.
Because collusion depends on secrecy, it is often uncovered through a participant eventually coming forward, frequently motivated by a leniency program that reduces penalties for the first party to disclose the arrangement. That incentive structure exploits the natural instability of any agreement that depends entirely on everyone involved staying quiet indefinitely.