We consider an infinitely repeated Bertrand game, in which prices are publicly observed and each firm receives a privately observed, i.i.d. cost shock in each period. We focus on symmetric perfect public equilibria, wherein any “punishments” are borne equally by all firms. We identify a tradeoff that is associated with collusive pricing schemes in which the price to be charged by each firm is strictly increasing in its cost level: such “fully sorting” schemes offer efficiency benefits, as they ensure that the lowest‐cost firm makes the current sale, but they also imply an informational cost (distorted pricing and/or equilibrium‐path price wars), since a higher‐cost firm must be deterred from mimicking a lower‐cost firm by charging a lower price. A rigid‐pricing scheme, where a firm's collusive price is independent of its current cost position, sacrifices efficiency benefits but also diminishes the informational cost. For a wide range of settings, the optimal symmetric collusive scheme requires (i) the absence of equilibrium‐path price wars and (ii) a rigid price. If firms are sufficiently impatient, however, the rigid‐pricing scheme cannot be enforced, and the collusive price of lower‐cost firms may be distorted downward in order to diminish the incentive to cheat. When the model is modified to include i.i.d. public demand shocks, the downward pricing distortion that accompanies a firm's lower‐cost realization may occur only when current demand is high.

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Environmental self-auditing by private firms is generally thought to both deserve and require encouragement. Firms can audit themselves more cheaply and effectively than can regulators, but too often are deterred for fear that the information they uncover will be used against them. To reduce this disincentive, the EPA's "Audit Policy" lowers punitive fines when firms promptly disclose and correct violations that they themselves discover. While some contend that the Audit Policy is inadequate, EPA touts its success, presenting as evidence the policy's track record to date. Yet our examination of that track record leads us to question EPA's conclusions. While the policy appears to have encouraged firms to self-audit in a number of instances, a comparison of the violations uncovered in these cases with those detected by standard enforcement practices suggests that the typical self-audited violation is relatively minor. For instance, cases arising under the Audit Policy are more likely to concern reporting violations, rather than emissions. The relative insignificance of self-audited violations raises a number of broader policy questions, including whether the Audit Policy could and should be revised to play a larger role in regulatory enforcement.