Umbrella pricing and cartel size

Stefan Napel and Dominik Welter

International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2023, vol. 91, issue C

Abstract: It is generally assumed that bigger scale and scope of private antitrust enforcement promotes effective competition. This has motivated several North American and European courts to uphold redress claims not only from clients of a detected cartel but also plaintiffs who were exposed to ‘umbrella pricing’, i.e. equilibrium price increases by non-colluding competitors. The paper shows that the presumed deterrence effects of obliging infringing firms to compensate aggrieved customers of non-infringing firms can be dominated by adverse cartel size effects: liability for umbrella damages primarily constrains small partial cartels. It thereby improves the comparative profitability and stability of large ones. More encompassing cartels can form, prices rise, and welfare falls.

Keywords: Cartel deterrence; Cartel formation; Effective competition; Umbrella effects; Redress payments; Cartel size (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 K21 L40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718723001017
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:indorg:v:91:y:2023:i:c:s0167718723001017

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.103032

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Industrial Organization is currently edited by P. Bajari, B. Caillaud and N. Gandal

More articles in International Journal of Industrial Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().