This report explains the principal economic and legal features of a unique set of data on 283 modern private international cartels discovered anywhere in the world from January 1990 to the end of 2005. Measured in real 2005 money, aggregate cartel sales and overcharges totaled about $1.2...

When firms can supply several separate markets, collusion can take two forms. Either firms establish production quotas on all the markets, or they share markets. This paper compares production quotas and market sharing agreements in a Cournot duopoly where firms incur a fixed cost for serving...

Based on an analysis of cartel prosecutions since 2007, this article assesses the way the European Commission has built up its fines in practice. The fines are compared with those imposed by the European Commission over the period from 1999 to 2006. The main findings are that, while fines have...

We build a model of tacit collusion between firms that operate in multiple markets to study the effects of trade costs. A key feature of the model is that cartel discipline is endogenous. Thus, markets that appear segmented are strategically linked via the incentive compatibility constraint....

We consider an international cartel whose members interact repeatedly in their own as well as in third-country segmented markets. Cartel discipline-an inverse measure of the degree of competition between firms-is endogenously determined by the cartel's incentive compatibility constraint (ICC),...

Numerous recently uncovered cartels operated along the supply chain, with firms at one end facilitating collusion at the other - hub-and-spoke arrangements. These cartels are hard to rationalize because they induce double marginalization and higher costs. We examine Canada's alleged bread cartel...

The aim of this article is to explore the most recent appeals concerning illegal cartels under Article 101 TFEU by revealing the relevant principles underpinning both the substantive and the procedural review of price-fixing agreements. Arguments advancing a perceived ‘criminalisation' of the...

We analyze strategic leaks due to spying out a rival’s bid in a first-price auction. Such leaks induce sequential bidding, complicated by the fact that the spy may be a counterspy who serves the interests of the spied at bidder and reports strategically distorted information. This ambiguity...

We study a repeated Cournot competition model where prices are determined not only by firms' quantities but also unobservable market shocks (Green and Porter, 1984). Unlike Green and Porter (1984), market shocks are persistent and today's market condition affects tomorrow's market condition....

We analyze the financial leverage of firms that collude to soften product market competition by forming a cartel. We find that cartel firms have lower leverage during collusion periods. This is consistent with the idea that cartel firms strategically reduce leverage to make their cartels more...