How Much Do Cartel Overcharge?

Marcel Boyer and Rachidi Kotchoni

Review of Industrial Organization, 2015, vol. 47, issue 2, 119-153

Abstract: Connor and Lande (Issues in competition law and policy, pp 2203–2218, 2008 ) conducted a survey of cartels and found a mean overcharge estimate in the range of 31–49 %. By examining more sources, Connor (Price-fixing overcharges, 2nd edn. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1610262 , 2010 ) finds a mean of 50.4 % for successful cartels. However, the data that are used in those studies are estimates that are obtained from different methodologies, sources, and contexts rather than from direct observation. We conduct a meta-analysis of cartel overcharge estimates that provides a sound treatment of these matters and other data problems. We find a bias-corrected mean and median overcharge estimate of 15.47 and 16.01 %. Our results have significant antitrust policy implications. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Antitrust; Cartel overcharges; Heckman correction; Kullback–Leibler divergence; Meta-analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Working Paper: How Much Do Cartels Overcharge (2015)
Working Paper: How Much Do Cartels Overcharge? (2015)
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DOI: 10.1007/s11151-015-9472-1

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