IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-01343016.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cartel punishment and the distortive effect of fines

Author

Listed:
  • Emilie Dargaud

    (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Andrea Mantovani

    (Dipartimento scienze economiche - UNIBO - Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna = University of Bologna)

  • Carlo Reggiani

    (School of Social Sciences - University of Manchester [Manchester])

Abstract

The fight against cartels is a priority for antitrust authorities worldwide but the goal is pursued in many different ways. Several types of fines can be levied on firms that are caught colluding but one common trait is that fines are usually distortive. In this article we focus on the economic effects of distortive fines. To this end, we compare a fine based on the cartel profit as opposed to one based on the cartel damage. We study the effects of the two fines and show that a potential trade-off between ex ante deterrence and ex post consumer surplus may occur. We show that such a trade-off is of particular relevance when antitrust authorities face exogenous fine caps, as it is often the case in practice. The results are robust to a number of extensions, including the relevant case of fines designed to punish managerial firms involved in cartel activities.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Emilie Dargaud & Andrea Mantovani & Carlo Reggiani, 2016. "Cartel punishment and the distortive effect of fines," Post-Print halshs-01343016, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01343016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Katsoulacos, Yannis & Motchenkova, Evgenia & Ulph, David, 2020. "Combining cartel penalties and private damage actions: The impact on cartel prices," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    2. Berkay Akyapi & Douglas C. Turner, 2022. "Cartel Penalties Under Endogenous Detection," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 61(3), pages 341-371, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    cartel; punishment; distortive fines;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law
    • L44 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Antitrust Policy and Public Enterprise, Nonprofit Institutions, and Professional Organizations
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of 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:hal:journl:halshs-01343016. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.