The Price Fixer: Compliance Tales from the Other Side

Andreas Stephan
Additional contact information
Andreas Stephan: Centre for Competition Policy and School of Law, University of East Anglia

No 2021-06, Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) from Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Abstract: This paper fills an important gap in the antitrust compliance literature by exploring the perspective of the price fixer in breaches of competition law. It provides a critical analysis of statements made by price fixers, their competition lawyers and in-house counsel involved in cartel cases. The study draws on a combination of publicly available statements and anonymised accounts collected over 15 years of engaging with each of these three groups. It concludes that those responsible for cartels are motivated by varying factors and do not necessarily understand or accept that cartel behaviour is wrongful. Also, disciplining those individuals is complicated by the incentives created through leniency and settlement programmes. These findings highlight the importance of continued investment in compliance and the broader need for education in competition law to make it less likely that infringements will occur in the first place.

Keywords: Competition Law; Antitrust; Compliance; Cartels. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-law
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ueaeco.github.io/working-papers/papers/ccp/CCP-21-06.pdf main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uea:ueaccp:2021_06

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Juliette Hardman, Center for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) from Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Juliette Hardmad ().