A cartel is difficult to maintain for which of the following reasons? A. Consumers substitute away from the good when the price increases. B. Individual cartel members are tempted to cheat on the agreement. C. Although the total gain to cartel members is positive, all members lose when everyone sticks to the agreement. D. The Justice Department only allows cartels to exist if nobody gets hurt. E. Some firms will reduce output in an effort to lower costs of production.

A cartel can be defined as a group of independent producers who come together to form a group in order to improve profits. In an oligopoly market, there are few firms in the market. The firms are such that the economic decisions of one firm or producer affects their rivals.

In such a situation, the firms come together to form a cartel to protect their interests. In a cartel, production limits are set for all producers so that the price is high. But cartels are generally short-lived.

This is because the individual producers have incentives to cheat the cartel by producing more than a set limit so that they can increase their profit and market share.