The role of economics in cartel detection.A review of cartel screens
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26458/jedep.v6i3.545Keywords:
competition, cartel, detectionempirical screens.Abstract
. In their desire to gain market share and profit, companies often resort to certain anti-competitive practices. Among them, it is well known that cartels are considered the most serious infringement of competition law. Cartels aim to increase their prices and profits at the expense of the consumers’welfare by avoiding the risks of competition and reducing the uncertainty in the market. In order to uncover cartels, screens can be a useful tool for competition authorities, using them to support opening an investigation or to filter industries prone to anticompetitive behaviour for further investigation. Screens can also help authorities to estimate the duration of the infringement, by identifying the starting point and the ending of the respective practice.This paper reviews the main screens identified in the empirical literature and also used by competition authorities in order to uncover firms’ behaviours which are more likely to be consistent with collusion than with competition.References
R.M. Abrantes-Metz. Roundtable on Ex Officio Cartel Investigations and the use of screens to detect cartels. October 21, 2013. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2343465.
R.M. Abrantes-Metz and P. Bajari. Screens for conspiracies and their multiple applications. In Antitrust, 24 (1), 2009, pp. 66-71.
R.M. Abrantes-Metz, M. Kraten, M.Albert & G. Seow.LIBOR Manipulation?.Working Paper 2008, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=339863.
R.M. Abrantes-Metz, L.M. Froeb, J. Geweke and C.T. Taylor.A Variance Screen for Collusion. In International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2006, Volume 24, pp. 467- 486.
Y. Bolotova, J. M. Connor and D. J. Miller. The Impact of Collusion on Price Behavior: Empirical Results from Two Recent Cases. In International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2008, 26, pp. 1290-1307.
J. Connor. Global Cartel Redux: The Amino Acid Lysine Antitrust Litigation (1996).WorkingPaper. 2002.Purdue University, West Lafayette.
F. Esposito, M. Ferrero. Variance screens for detecting collusion: an application to two cartel cases in Italy. Italian Competition Authority, Working Paper, 2006.
E.J. Green andR.H. Porter. Non Cooperative Collusionunder Imperfect Price Information. In Econometrica, Vol 52, 1, January 1984.
P.A. Grout and S. Sonderegger. Predicting Cartels. Office of Fair Trading, Economic discussion paper 773, 2005.
J.E. Harrington. Detecting Cartels. In Handbook of Antitrust Economics, P. Buccirossi Editor, 2008.
J.E. Harrington. Behavioral screening and the detection of cartels. In European Competition Law Annual 2006. Enforcement of Prohibition of Cartels, Hart Publishing, 2006.
K. Hüschelrath. How Are Cartels Detected? The Increasing Use of Proactive Methods to Establish Antitrust Infringements. In Journal of European Competition Law & Practice, 2010, Vol. 1, No. 6.
R. Paun and P. Prisecaru. An Economic Instrument to Evaluate the (Pro) Competitive Nature of Industries: The Aggregate Index of Competitive Pressure. Romanian Competition Journal, December 2013.
L. Petit. The Economic Detection Instruments of the Netherlands Competition Authority: The Competition Index. NMaWorking Papers, January 2012.
Romanian Competition Council. Competition developments in key sectors. Bucharest, 2016.
OECD. Ex officio cartel investigations and the use of screens to detect cartels. 2013, available online at http://www.oecd.org/daf/competition/exofficio-cartel-investigation-2013.pdf.
OECD. Guidelines for fighting big rigging in public procurement.2009.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Journal of Economic Development, Environment and People by Authors is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://ojs.spiruharet.ro/index.php/jedep/issue/archive.
