This paper develops a model of the birth and death of cartels in the presence of enforcement activities by a Competition Authority (CA). We distinguish three sets of interventions: (a) detecting, prosecuting and penalizing cartels; (b) actions that aim to stop cartel activity in the short-term,...

We study antitrust enforcement that channels price-fixing incentives through setting fines and allocating resources to detection activities. Antitrust fines obey four legal principles: punishments should fit the crime, proportionality, bankruptcy considerations, and minimum fines. Bankruptcy...

In this paper we set out the welfare economics based case for imposing cartel penalties on the cartel overcharge rather than on the more conventional bases of revenue or profits (illegal gains). To do this we undertake a systematic comparison of a penalty based on the cartel overcharge with...

For a general class of oligopoly models with price competition, we analyze the impact of ex-ante leniency programs in antitrust regulation on the endogenous maximal-sustainable cartel price. This impact depends upon industry characteristics including its cartel culture. Our analysis disentangles...

Three well-known solutions for cooperative TU-games are the Shapley value, the Banzhaf value and the equal division solution. In the literature various axiomatizations of these solutions can be found. Axiomatizations of the Shapley value often use efficiency which is not satisfied by the Banzhaf...

We analyze maximal cartel prices in infinitely-repeated oligopoly models under leniency where fines are linked to illegal gains, as often outlined in existing antitrust regulation, and detection probabilities depend on the degree of collusion. We introduce cartel culture that describes how...

Even under antitrust enforcement, firms may still form a cartel in an infinitely-repeated oligopoly model when the discount factor is sufficiently close to one. We present a linear oligopoly model where the profit-maximizing cartel price converges to the competitive equilibrium price as the...

The condition is derived for Friedman 's trigger strategy to sustaina collusive market equilibrium as a noncooperative Nash equilibriumgiven subjective beliefs as to the antitrust authority's ability of suc-cesfully dissolving the illegal cartel.

To account for the illegal nature of price-fixing agreements, detection probabilities are introduced in a dynamic oligopoly. It follows that for a trigger strategy to sustain a non-cooperative collusive equilibrium as a SPNE both the discount rate and all per-period detection probabilities have...