The protection of a "system of undistorted competition" within the internal market is one of the core elements of EU law that institutionalizes economic integration. The addressees of the prohibitions regarding restraints of competition such as Articles 101 and 102 TFEU are "undertakings". Hence...

The literature identifies a significant drop in merger control enforcement activity on both sides of the Atlantic during the last decade. Furthermore, this drop in enforcement activity is convincingly connected to enforcement problems on the sides of the competition agencies. This paper goes...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of the new Council Regulation (EC) 1/2003 which replaces the mandatory notification and authorization system by a legal exception system. Effectiveness is operationalized via the two subcriteria compliance to Art. 81 EC Treaty and the probabilities of...

Competition law is a pillar of a market economy and determines the quality of economic life. This paper explores the origin and development of competition law in Kosovo. It deals with constitutional developments. It attempts to explore how Kosovo's Constitution expresses crucial provisions...

We investigate the relationship between public and private enforcers introducing a more differentiated approach. In contrast to the existing literature, we take into account that the costs and benefits of detection and prosecution and, thus, the usefulness of each enforcement mode may change...

We provide an empirical assessment of EC cartel enforcement decisions between 2000 and 2011. Following an initial characterisation of our dataset, we especially investigate the determinants of the duration of cartel investigations. We are able to identify several key drivers of investigation...

Public and private action against cartels is an internationally recognized cornerstone of antitrust enforcement. Effective private enforcement requires that cartel victims can receive (at least) full compensation for the harm suffered. Academics and competition authorities support this goal with...

The study analyzes the impact of European antitrust enforcement on industry performance measured as competition intensity (Price Cost Margin) and productivity (labor productivity and distance to the frontier). For a panel of OECD countries on the industry level since 1988, we estimate the impact...

We study the timing of leniency applications using a novel application of multi-spell discrete-time survival analysis for a sample of cartels prosecuted by the European Commission between 1996 and 2014. The start of a Commission investigation does not affect the rate by which conspirators apply...