This is a survey of the economic principles that underlie antitrust law and how those principles relate to competition policy. We address four core subject areas: market power, collusion, mergers between competitors, and monopolization. In each area, we select the most relevant portions of...

This paper finds evidence of an inverse U shape in the number of cartels detected by a Competition Agency (CA) over its lifetime. We interpret this as evidence that, as the CA builds up experience in enforcement, this feeds back into the business community to deter future cartel formation. We...

We revisit the pros and cons of cartel criminalization with focus on its possible introduction in the EU. We document a recent phenomenon that we name EU ``leniency inflation", whereby leniency has been increasingly awarded to many, and sometimes all members of a cartel. We argue that, coupled...

We investigate the impact of cartel breakdowns on merger activity. Merging information on cartel cases decided by the European Commission (EC) between 2000 and 2011 with a detailed data set of worldwide merger activity, we find that, first, the average number of all merger transactions increase...

This paper analyses how the endogenous detection of an upstream cartel by a down-stream buyer allows the detecting firm to raise rivals' cost. We model a market with a vertical structure, where a stable all-inclusive cartel is operating in the upstream market which provides an input to a...

Algorithmic competition has arrived. With it has come the specter of algorithmic collusion – rapid detection of co-conspirators’ defection via technologically enhanced price monitoring and setting capability can encourage anticompetitive collusion. Strikingly, the ability to track...

This paper develops a model of the birth and death of cartels in the presence of enforcement activities by a Competition Authority (CA). We distinguish three sets of interventions: (a) detecting, prosecuting and penalizing cartels; (b) actions that aim to stop cartel activity in the short-term,...

Tacit collusion reduces welfare comparably to explicit collusion but remains mostly unaddressed by antitrust enforcement which greatly depends on evidence of explicit communication. We propose to target specific elements of firms' behavior that facilitate tacit collusion by providing...