IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jhu/papers/528.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

he Impact of the Corporate Leniency Program on Cartel Formation and the Cartel Price Path

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph E. Harrington, Jr
  • Joe Chen

Abstract

Previous research exploring the effect of corporate leniency programs has modelled the oligopoly stage game as a Prisoners?Dilemma. Using numerical analysis, we consider the Bertrand price game and allow the probability of detection and penalties to be sensitive to firms?prices. Consistent with earlier results, a maximal leniency program necessarily makes collusion more difficult. However, we also find that partial leniency programs - such as in the U.S. - can make collusion easier compared to offering no leniency. We also show that even if cartel formation is not deterred, a leniency program can reduce the prices charged by firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph E. Harrington, Jr & Joe Chen, 2005. "he Impact of the Corporate Leniency Program on Cartel Formation and the Cartel Price Path," Economics Working Paper Archive 528, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:jhu:papers:528
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ2.jhu.edu/REPEC/papers/wp528harrington.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2005. "Optimal Corporate Leniency Programs," Economics Working Paper Archive 527, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    2. Joseph E. Harrington, 2005. "Optimal Cartel Pricing In The Presence Of An Antitrust Authority," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 46(1), pages 145-169, February.
    3. Green, Edward J & Porter, Robert H, 1984. "Noncooperative Collusion under Imperfect Price Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 87-100, January.
    4. Hay, George A & Kelley, Daniel, 1974. "An Empirical Survey of Price Fixing Conspiracies," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(1), pages 13-38, April.
    5. Motta, Massimo & Polo, Michele, 2003. "Leniency programs and cartel prosecution," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 347-379, March.
    6. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr., 2004. "Cartel Pricing Dynamics in the Presence of an Antitrust Authority," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(4), pages 651-673, Winter.
    7. Harrington, Joseph Jr., 2003. "Some implications of antitrust laws for cartel pricing," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 79(3), pages 377-383, June.
    8. Harrington, Joseph Jr. & Chen, Joe, 2006. "Cartel pricing dynamics with cost variability and endogenous buyer detection," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1185-1212, November.
    9. Abrantes-Metz, Rosa M. & Froeb, Luke M. & Geweke, John & Taylor, Christopher T., 2006. "A variance screen for collusion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 467-486, May.
    10. Motchenkova, E., 2004. "Effects of Leniency Programs on Cartel Stability," Other publications TiSEM d6321c1e-b79a-4aae-8ef5-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    11. Giancarlo Spagnolo, 2004. "Divide et Impera. Optimnal Deterrence Mechanisms Against Cartels and Organized Crime," Econometric Society 2004 North American Winter Meetings 485, Econometric Society.
    12. Philippe Cyrenne, 1999. "On Antitrust Enforcement and the Deterrence of Collusive Behaviour," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 14(3), pages 257-272, May.
    13. Levenstein, Margaret & Suslow, Valerie Y. & Oswald, Lynda J., 2003. "Contemporary International Cartels And Developing Countries: Economic Effects And Implications For Competition Policy," Working Papers 14590, International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium.
    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. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2005. "Optimal Corporate Leniency Programs," Economics Working Paper Archive 527, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    2. Marvão, Catarina, 2014. "Heterogeneous Penalties and Private Information," Konkurrensverket Working Paper Series in Law and Economics 2014:1, Konkurrensverket (Swedish Competition Authority).
    3. Marvao, Catarina, 2014. "Heterogeneous Penalties and Private Information," SITE Working Paper Series 29, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics.
    4. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2006. "Modelling the Birth and Death of Cartels with an Application to Evaluating Antitrust Policy," Economics Working Paper Archive 532, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    5. Asker, John, 2010. "Leniency and post-cartel market conduct: Preliminary evidence from parcel tanker shipping," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 407-414, July.

    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. Harrington, Joseph Jr. & Chen, Joe, 2006. "Cartel pricing dynamics with cost variability and endogenous buyer detection," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1185-1212, November.
    2. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2005. "Detecting Cartels," Economics Working Paper Archive 526, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    3. 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.
    4. Harold Houba & Evgenia Motchenkova & Quan Wen, 2008. "Maximal Cartel Pricing and Leniency Programs," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-120/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    5. Panayiotis Agisilaou, 2013. "Collusion in Industrial Economics and Optimally Designed Leniency Programmes - A Survey," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2013-03, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    6. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr., 2004. "Cartel Pricing Dynamics in the Presence of an Antitrust Authority," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(4), pages 651-673, Winter.
    7. Zhou, Jun, 2011. "Evaluating Leniency with Missing Information on Undetected Cartels: Exploring Time-Varying Policy Impacts on Cartel Duration," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 353, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    8. Joseph E. Harrington Jr. & Andrzej Skrzypacz, 2007. "Collusion under monitoring of sales," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(2), pages 314-331, June.
    9. Motchenkova, Evgenia, 2008. "Determination of optimal penalties for antitrust violations in a dynamic setting," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 269-291, August.
    10. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2006. "How Do Cartels Operate?," Economics Working Paper Archive 531, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    11. Bochet, Olivier, 2007. "Switching from complete to incomplete information," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(6), pages 735-748, August.
    12. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2005. "Optimal Corporate Leniency Programs," Economics Working Paper Archive 527, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    13. Feess, E. & Walzl, M., 2008. "Quid-pro-quo or winner-takes-it-all? : an analysis of corporate leniency programs and lessons to learn for EU and US policies," Research Memorandum 057, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    14. Hinloopen, Jeroen, 2006. "Internal cartel stability with time-dependent detection probabilities," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1213-1229, November.
    15. Bolotova, Yuliya & Connor, John M. & Miller, Douglas J., 2008. "The impact of collusion on price behavior: Empirical results from two recent cases," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1290-1307, November.
    16. Harold Houba & Evgenia Motchenkova & Quan Wen, 2009. "The Effects of Leniency on Maximal Cartel Pricing," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 09-081/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    17. Switgard Feuerstein, 2005. "Collusion in Industrial Economics—A Survey," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 163-198, December.
    18. Roldan, Flavia, 2011. "Covert networks and antitrust policy," IESE Research Papers D/932, IESE Business School.
    19. Joseph E. Harrington, 2005. "Optimal Cartel Pricing In The Presence Of An Antitrust Authority," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 46(1), pages 145-169, February.
    20. Andreoli-Versbach, Patrick & Franck, Jens-Uwe, 2013. "Actions Speak Louder than Words: Econometric Evidence to Target Tacit Collusion in Oligopolistic Markets," Discussion Papers in Economics 16179, University of Munich, Department of Economics.

    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:jhu:papers:528. 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: Humphrey Muturi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dejhuus.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.