IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jcomle/v10y2014i1p87-106..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Methods For Quantifying Antitrust Damages: The Pasta Cartel In Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanni Notaro

Abstract

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the quantification of the damages caused by anticompetitive conduct by applying a number of empirical methods to the pasta cartel in Italy, which was discovered by the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (Italian Competition Authority, or AGCM) in 2007. These methods include the dummy variable approach, the dynamic treatment effects (DTE) method, and the so-called straight-line methods. The key results show that both the dummy variable and the DTE methods perform better than the straight-line methods. Moreover, the last should not be used when the underlying cost and demand drivers over the cartel period are substantially different from those prevailing before or after. The dummy variable approach and the DTE method provide very similar estimates of the cartel overcharge, though there is no reason to expect that this would always be the case. Finally, this article contributes to the ongoing debate on “optimal fines” and on the societal benefits of having a proper antitrust enforcement by showing that that the fines levied by the AGCM in this particular case were below “optimal” levels, and that the benefits from this intervention of the AGCM are roughly seven times its annual budget.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Notaro, 2014. "Methods For Quantifying Antitrust Damages: The Pasta Cartel In Italy," Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(1), pages 87-106.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:jcomle:v:10:y:2014:i:1:p:87-106.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/joclec/nht020
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carsten J. Crede, 2019. "A Structural Break Cartel Screen for Dating and Detecting Collusion," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 54(3), pages 543-574, May.
    2. Carsten J. Crede, 2015. "A structural break cartel screen for dating and detecting collusion," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2015-11, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    3. Nitish Jain & Sameer Hasija & Serguei Netessine, 2021. "Supply Chains and Antitrust Governance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(11), pages 6822-6838, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jcomle:v:10:y:2014:i:1:p:87-106.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jcle .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.