Around 2012, authorities discovered one of the most complex set of cartels in the world in its construction industry. Dozens of companies large and small colluded on the price of bids for public works in several cities in the Province of Quebec over a decade or more. Bidding firms, some with...

In the historic Finnish Asphalt case, a court provided both considerable direct compensation for the 40 municipalities that sued and also several types of indirect relief. After laboriously weighing complex economic, statistical, and testimonial evidence, the Court boldly sided with the economic...

Antitrust law provides treble damages for victims of antitrust violations, but the vast majority of private cases settle. The average or median size of these settlements relative to the overcharges involved has, until now, been only the subject of anecdotes or speculation. To ascertain what we...

This article is the first to analyze whether cartel sanctions are optimal. The conventional wisdom is that the current level of sanctions is adequate or excessive. The article demonstrates, however, that the combined level of current United States cartel sanctions is only 9% to 21% as large as...

Cartels are illegal in India, as they are almost everywhere. They are subject to heavy fines. Why, then, do businesses frequently try to fix prices? Because doing so usually is profitable. On average cartels raise prices by more than 20%, and probably face less than a 25% chance of being caught...

This paper describes and analyzes the outcomes of cartel-whistleblower programs around the world, including those of the United States and Canada, which keep the identities of amnesty recipients secret before and after a case is closed. A total of at least 65 corporations have received full...

This paper describes the sources and methods used to create the PIC data set, which the author believes to be the largest collection of legal-economic information on contemporary price-fixing cartels. It details the scope, strengths, and limitations of the data therein. Finally, summary...

Closing the loopholes of downstream application of the Capper-Volstead exemption in the food system and pay for delay in pharmaceuticals is an important advance in US and EU antitrust norms. First, pay-for-delay conduct has been harmful for pharmaceuticals customers. After ten years of...

For criminal violations of the Sherman Act, although guided by federal sentencing guidelines, U.S. Department of Justice has great latitude in recommending corporate cartel fines to the federal courts, and its recommendations are nearly always determinative. In this paper, we analyze the...