IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/05003.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Experimental Study of Leniency Programs

Author

Listed:
  • Yasuyo Hamaguchi
  • Toshiji Kawagoe

Abstract

Antitrust authorities of many countries have been trying to establish appropriate competition policies based on economic analysis. Recently an anti-cartel policy called a "leniency program" has been introduced in many countries as an effective policy to dissolve cartels. In this paper, we studied several kinds of leniency programs through laboratory experiments. We experimentally controlled for two factors: 1) cartel size: the number of cartel members in a group, small (two-person) or large (seven-person), 2) schedule of reduced fine: the number of firms that are given reduced fines. The experimental results showed that (1) an increase in the number of cartel members in a group increased the number of cartels dissolved, (2) changing the coverage of reduced fine had no significant effect both in two-player case and in seven-player case.

Suggested Citation

  • Yasuyo Hamaguchi & Toshiji Kawagoe, 2005. "An Experimental Study of Leniency Programs," Discussion papers 05003, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:05003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/05e003.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jose Apesteguia & Martin Dufwenberg & Reinhard Selten, 2007. "Blowing the Whistle," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 31(1), pages 143-166, April.
    2. Motta, Massimo & Polo, Michele, 2003. "Leniency programs and cartel prosecution," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 347-379, March.
    3. Karine Brisset & Lionel Thomas, 2004. "Leniency Program: A New Tool in Competition Policy to Deter Cartel Activity in Procurement Auctions," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 5-19, January.
    4. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Mechtenberg, Lydia & Muehlheusser, Gerd & Roider, Andreas, 2020. "Whistleblower protection: Theory and experimental evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    2. Ulrich Blum & Nicole Steinat & Michael Veltins, 2008. "On the rationale of leniency programs: a game-theoretical analysis," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 209-229, June.
    3. Spagnolo, Giancarlo & Buccirossi, Paolo, 2006. "Optimal Fines in the Era of Whistleblowers," CEPR Discussion Papers 5465, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Abbink, Klaus & Wu, Kevin, 2017. "Reward self-reporting to deter corruption: An experiment on mitigating collusive bribery," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 256-272.
    2. Chowdhury, Subhasish M. & Crede, Carsten J., 2020. "Post-cartel tacit collusion: Determinants, consequences, and prevention," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    3. Bodnar, Olivia & Fremerey, Melinda & Normann, Hans-Theo & Schad, Jannika Leonie, 2021. "The effects of private damage claims on cartel activity: Experimental evidence," DICE Discussion Papers 315, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE), revised 2021.
    4. Hamaguchi, Yasuyo & Kawagoe, Toshiji & Shibata, Aiko, 2009. "Group size effects on cartel formation and the enforcement power of leniency programs," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 145-165, March.
    5. Peter T. Dijkstra & Marco A. Haan & Lambert Schoonbeek, 2021. "Leniency Programs and the Design of Antitrust: Experimental Evidence with Free-Form Communication," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 59(1), pages 13-36, August.
    6. Andres, Maximilian & Bruttel, Lisa & Friedrichsen, Jana, 2021. "The leniency rule revisited: Experiments on cartel formation with open communication," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    7. Tebbe, Eva, 2018. "Once bitten, twice shy? Market size affects the effectiveness of a leniency program by (de-)activating hysteresis effects," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168304, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association, revised 2018.
    8. Bigoni, Maria & Fridolfsson, Sven-Olof & Le Coq, Chloé & Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 2008. "Fines, Leniency and Rewards in Antitrust: An Experiment," Working Paper Series 738, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 06 Aug 2009.
    9. Ulrich Blum & Nicole Steinat & Michael Veltins, 2008. "On the rationale of leniency programs: a game-theoretical analysis," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 209-229, June.
    10. Noussair, Charles N. & Seres, Gyula, 2020. "The effect of collusion on efficiency in experimental auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 267-287.
    11. Kyle Hampton & Katerina Sherstyuk, 2012. "Demand shocks, capacity coordination, and industry performance: lessons from an economic laboratory," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(1), pages 139-166, March.
    12. Zhijun Chen & Patrick Rey, 2013. "On the Design of Leniency Programs," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 917-957.
    13. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2007:i:25:p:1-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Jun Zhou, 2016. "The dynamics of leniency application and the knock-on effect of cartel enforcement," Working Papers 13042, Bruegel.
    15. Ryvkin, Dmitry & Serra, Danila, 2020. "Corruption and competition among bureaucrats: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 439-451.
    16. Evgenia Motchenkova & Rob Laan, 2011. "Strictness of leniency programs and asymmetric punishment effect," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 58(4), pages 401-431, December.
    17. Maximilian Andres & Lisa Bruttel & Jana Friedrichsen, 2019. "The Effect of a Leniency Rule on Cartel Formation and Stability: Experiments with Open Communication," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1835, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    18. Maria Bigoni & Sven-Olof Fridolfsson & Chloé Le Coq & Giancarlo Spagnolo, 2015. "Trust, Leniency, and Deterrence," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(4), pages 663-689.
    19. Carsten J. Crede & Liang Lu, 2016. "The effects of endogenous enforcement on strategic uncertainty and cartel deterrence," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) 16-08, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    20. Houba Harold & Motchenkova Evgenia & Wen Quan, 2015. "The Effects of Leniency on Cartel Pricing," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 15(2), pages 351-389, July.
    21. Motchenkova, E. & Laan, R., 2005. "Strictness of Leniency Programs and Cartels of Asymmetric Firms," Other publications TiSEM 90dd8ebe-c992-44b4-bc5d-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:eti:dpaper:05003. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: TANIMOTO, Toko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.html .

    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.