considerations, and minimum fines. Bankruptcy considerations limit maximum fines, ensure abnormal cartel profits and impose a … lower price by making it more attractive than collusion on higher prices. For a range of low cartel prices, the fine is set … to the legal mi nimum. Raising minimum fines will enable the cartel to raise its price and is better avoided. Our …

A challenge for many cartels is avoiding a destabilizing increase in non-cartel supply in response to having raised … price. In the case of the German cement cartel that operated over 1991-2002, the primary source of non-cartel supply was … imports from Eastern European cement manufacturers. Industry sources have claimed that the cartel sought to control imports by …

actual cartel effects. In this paper, we show that misdating cartel effects leads to a (weak) overestimation of but … antitrust damage estimation based on predicted cartel prices can have either sign. We extend the before-during-and-after method … with an empirical cartel dating procedure that uses multiple structural break tests to determine the actual begin and end …