Explicit collusion was a fact from 1928 through 1941, and perhaps longer. Jersey Standard (old Exxon) was involved in many explicit cartel agreements with the Germans and many other corporate entities. Standard's main concern was that IG Farben and others would not compete with them in certain areas of the world, or in the development of particular technologies. We know this from documents that the Allies uncovered after WWII during the US occupation of Germany. Read the book, All Honorable Men, by James Stewart Martin, Little&Brown, 1950. Also books like: Cartels in Action; International Cartels; and the Kilgore Senate hearings in 1944-45 have a lot of data about collusion.
Still, since WWII, the 'true' picture of private corporate diplomacy for most, if not all, industries has yet to be written. Most historians are clueless.
IMO, during the last few decades, I think there has been much more competition than most would imagine. Though collusive agreements at the local/regional levels are more common than most assume, at the industrial level, I think there is little collusion. In truth, we probably will never know.
Modern corporate history is a void.
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