While price-fixing cartel prosecutions have received significant attention, the policy determinants and the political preferences that guide such antitrust prosecutions remain understudied. We empirically examine the intertemporal shifts in U.S. antitrust cartel prosecutions during the period...

We analyze horizontal mergers when the acquirer holds a passive partial ownership stake (PPO) in the target firm prior to the merger. We show that a PPO reduces the minimal synergy level necessary to make a merger beneficial for consumers. It follows that an antitrust authority ignoring existing...

This chapter examines anti-cartel enforcement in selected jurisdictions around the world, paying particular attention to the role of private court actions in attaining optimally deterring sanctions. The principal conclusions are as follows. There are numerous indicators that enforcement in North...

Antitrust is back in vogue at the U.S. Supreme Court. Whereas the Rehnquist Court decided few antitrust cases in its latter years (only one from 1993 to 1995, one each year from 1996 through 1999, and none from 2000 to 2003), the Roberts Court issued seven antitrust decisions in its first two...

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...

The European Commission has launched a number of antitrust investigations against the major energy incumbents in the aftermath of the energy sector inquiry. Most of them have already been settled under Article 9 of the EC Regulation 1/2003 and the undertakings offered far-reaching, sometimes...

This paper aims at highlighting the Commission's approach towards the relation between sector specific regulation and general competition law, especially concerning energy markets and the road to Internal Market objective.We firstly present Trinko case, in order to focus on two crucial and...

Economic literature often offers conflicting views on the likely efficiency effects of information exchanges, communication between firms, and market transparency. On the one hand, it is argued that increased information dissemination improves firm planning to the benefit of society (including...

This paper is an excerpt of a comprehensive examination of the global bulk vitamins cartels of the 1990s. In terms of its precision and breadth of coverage, the quantitative information now available on vitamins surpasses that of almost any other modern cartel. For example, the internal records...