The paper's starting point is that EC competition law does not draw any distinction between horizontal and vertical relations when it comes to the definition of the concept of agreement. This approach could make sense if vertical and horizontal agreements were considered as equally harmful to...

Legal actions by direct and indirect purchasers to recover damages as a result of price-fixing by suppliers have been common in the United States for many years and are now beginning in a number of other countries including Australia and Canada. This paper argues that traditional measures of...

We examine the impact of agreements that prohibit superstars from switching their services to rivals on firms' ability to collude. Exclusivity (or non-compete) clauses are not uncommon in the sports, entertainment and professional services industries, but courts often refrain from enforcing them...

In industries with unobservable wholesale contracting, retailers may enjoy cartel rents in their output market through the formation of a buyer group in their input market. A buyer group allows retailers to credibly commit to increased input prices, which serve to reduce combined final output to...

In recent years, South African competition authorities have initiated a number of price-fixing cases in markets where cooperation among competitors was legal and often encouraged. These markets present economists with special difficulties when estimating cartel overcharges. Conventional...

This paper assesses the antitrust fines and private penalties imposed on the participants of 260 international cartels discovered during 1990-2005, using four indicators of enforcement effectiveness. First, the United States is almost always the first to investigate and sanction international...

In The Antitrust Paradox, Robert Bork discusses policy responses to naked and ancillary price fixing as well as vertical restraints. Empirical research finds that vertical restraints are generally welfare-enhancing. We examine cartels that used vertical restraints to support collusion. We find...

We consider a vertically related industry and analyze how the total harm due to a price increase upstream is distributed over downstream firms and final consumers. For this purpose, we develop a general model without making specific assumptions regarding demand, costs, or the mode of...

We investigate the possibility for two vertically related firms to at least partially collude on the wholesale price over an infinite horizon to mitigate or eliminate the effects of double marginalisation, thereby avoiding contracts which might not be enforceable. We characterise alternative...

We investigate the effect of a vertical merger on downstream firms' ability to collude in a repeated game framework. We show that a vertical merger has two main effects. On the one hand, it increases the total collusive profits, increasing the stakes of collusion. On the other hand, it creates...