Going once, going twice, reported! Cartel activity and the effectiveness of antitrust policies in experimental auctions

Jeroen Hinloopen and Sander Onderstal

European Economic Review, 2014, vol. 70, issue C, 317-336

Abstract: We experimentally examine the effectiveness of antitrust policies against bidding rings in the English auction (EN) and the first-price sealed-bid auction (FP). We consider both traditional antitrust policy (without a leniency program) and modern antitrust policy (with a leniency program). In EN, neither antitrust policy has a significant effect on cartel deterrence, cartel stability, cartel recidivism, and winning bids. In FP, traditional antitrust policy deters cartel formation, destabilizes cartels, decreases cartel recidivism, and reduces the average winning bid. The leniency program has two perverse effects in FP: cartels become more stable and the average winning cartel bid decreases. At the same time, in both auctions the leniency program triggers many more cartels to be revealed. This suggests that it is misleading to use the number of revealed cartels as a measure of the effectiveness of the leniency program.

Keywords: Antitrust policy; Leniency programs; English auction; First-price auction; Laboratory experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D44 L41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292114000889
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:eecrev:v:70:y:2014:i:c:p:317-336

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2014.06.002

Access Statistics for this article

European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer

More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().