Collusion remains a strong undercurrent of business practice despite anti-cartel enforcement being a top priority of competition authorities. Alongside active prosecution of cartels, the study of cartels is a vibrant area of research for economic and legal scholars. A challenge for both practice and scholarship is that cartels evolve, as colluding firms continuously devise new methods to circumvent competition. Cartels Diagnosed presents twelve gripping cartel case studies of collusion from key business sectors such as the airline industry, the gasoline industry, and big pharma. Written by renowned economists, these concise and accessible case studies deliver novel insights into cartel formation, facilitating practices, cartels' modus operandi, and the efficacy of cartels. Assisting in understanding new cartel mechanisms and their effects, developing new policies to deter and destabilize cartels, and measuring harm, this volume on cartel morphology is an invaluable reference for supporting public and private enforcers in detecting and prosecuting cartels.



TABLE OF CONTENTS



Introduction


1. Entry barriers, personal relationships, and cartel formation. Generic Drugs in the United States. Emily Cuddy, Robert H. Porter, Amanda Starc, and Tomas G. Wollmann


2. "Now you are asking for a real war!". Private alarm systems in Norway. Kurt Brekke and Lars Sorgard


3. Coordination fuel surcharges. Air Cargo Worldwide. Zhiqui Chen


4. Price fixing or fixing competition? Bread in Israel. Chaim Fershtman and Yossi Spiegel


5. The role of platforms for facilitating anticompetitive communication. Retail gasoline in Australia. David P. Byrne, Nicolas de Roos, A. Rachel Grinberg, and Leslie M. Marx


6. Collusion with non-express communication. Retail Gasoline in Norway. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr.


7. Cartel instability and price wars. Retail gasoline in Canada. Robert Clark, Marco Duarte, and Jean-François Houde.


8. Coordinated rebate reductions and semi-collusion. Retail gasoline in Sweden. Frode Steen and Lars Sorgard


9. Average bid auction format facilitates bidding rings. Construction tenders in Italy. Francesco Decarolis


10. The challenges of cartelization with many products and ongoing technological advancements. Liquid crystal displays worldwide. Dennis Carlton, Mark Israel, Ian Macswain, and Allan Shampine


11. Two cartels in the supply chain. Raw tobacco in Spain. Thilo Klein, Helder Vasconcelos, and Elena Zoido


12. Is it collusion or competition behind price parallelism. Steel manufacturing in Greece. Yannis Katsoulacos and Marc Ivaldi


Figures

Tables

Contributos