The EC antitrust prohibitions are regularly invoked in private litigation as a shield. Private parties also play an important role in public antitrust enforcement through complaints to the competition authorities. However, in marked contrast with the situation in the US, private actions for...

This paper deals with the application of the principle of 'ne bis in idem' in EC antitrust enforcement. The principle of 'ne bis in idem', laid down in Article 4 of Protocol 7 to the European Convention on Human Rights and in Article 50 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union,...

Since 1996, the European Commission has been operating a leniency programme, under which companies cooperating with its cartel investigations can obtain immunity from fines or a reduction of fines. Leniency plays a prominent role in EU cartel enforcement today. This paper assesses the positive...

Cartel practices attract enormous corporate fines, even where they only involve a handful of employees. Internal compliance programmes are thought to protect firms by training employees and auditing their activities. However, this paper argues that such programmes are ineffective because...

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...

Despite the successes of cartel detection over the last twenty years, there are many who believe that competition authorities have just started to scratch the surface. The focus of this note is to make the case that proactive detection and deterrence policies need to be established, and that...

This Article examines whether the current penalties in the United States Sentencing Guidelines are set at the appropriate levels to deter illegal price fixing cartels optimally. The authors analyze two data sets to determine how high on average cartels raise prices. The first consists of every...

Economic approaches to determining criminal sanctions focus on harm-based “optimal” penalties. In this note, we examine the extent to which the criminal fines for organizations convicted of price fixing contained in the United States Sentencing Commission Guidelines (USSG) and relied on by...

There are a variety of legitimate reasons why competitors may need or simply wish to collaborate. Firms may collaborate in order to finance innovation and improve the quality or variety of their existing products, to develop new and superior products, to expand to new markets, or to improve...