We study antitrust enforcement in which the fine must obey four legal principles: punishments should fit the crime, proportionality, bankruptcy considerations, and minimum fines. We integrate these legal principles into an infinitely-repeated oligopoly model, where bankruptcy considerations...

This paper experimentally analyzes the effects of non-discriminatory and discriminatory leniency policies on hard-core cartels. We design a mechanism to form a hard-core cartel, which allows that multiple ringleaders emerge. Ringleaders often take a leading role in the coordination and formation...

We study antitrust enforcement that channels price-fixing incentives through setting fines and allocating resources to detection activities. Antitrust fines obey four legal principles: punishments should fit the crime, proportionality, bankruptcy considerations, and minimum fines. Bankruptcy...

This article analyzes the first 22 cartel decisions of the European Commission under its 2006 revised fining Guidelines. I find that the severity of the cartel fines relative to affected sales is about double that of the fines decided under the previous 1998 Guidelines. Severity varies only...

The following charts illustrate the global size and economic impacts of the modern international cartel movement and the enforcement responses of the world’s antitrust authorities and national courts. The sample encompasses 640 private hard-core cartels that were subject to government or...

Our survey identified about 200 serious social-science studies of cartels which contained 674 observations of average overcharges. Our primary finding is that the median cartel overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods has been 25%; 17-19% for domestic cartels, and 30-33% for...

With its Proposal for a directive to empower the competition authorities of the Member States to be more effective enforcers (“ECN Proposal”), the Commission has undertaken great effort to harmonise public enforcement throughout the Member States and has thereby entered uncharted waters....