Penalizing cartels - A spectrum of regimes

Yannis Katsoulacos*, Evgenia Motchenkova, David Ulph

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

There has been much discussion by both academics and policymakers of the most appropriate way of penalizing cartels taking account of both the effects of different penalty regimes on welfare as well as various implementation considerations such as ease/cost of implementation and transparency/legal certainty. Consequently there now exists a range of proposed penalty regimes - including two put forward by ourselves. While these can all seem like very distinct regimes, in this article we show that they can usefully be thought of as lying along a spectrum, inter-connected by the idea of trying to penalize cartels in relation to the damage they cause. They differ in their informational requirements, and in particular whether some key factors needed to calculate the penalty are case-specific or an average across a wide range of cases. Subtle differences in what information is required and how it is used can sometimes cause significant changes in either the welfare or implementation properties of regimes. This new perspective may provide a helpful way of organizing the discussion about the pros and cons of the different proposals.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)339-351
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Antitrust Enforcement
Volume7
Issue number3
Early online date5 Jun 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2019

Keywords

  • antitrust enforcement
  • antitrust law
  • antitrust penalties
  • cartels

Cite this