DETERRENCE EFFECTS OF KOREAN ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT ON PRODUCER PRICES AND PROFIT MARGINS

Robert Feinberg and Minsoo Park ()

Journal of Competition Law and Economics, 2015, vol. 11, issue 4, 917-933

Abstract: Antitrust enforcement is well established in Korea, yet there has been little study of its effectiveness. John Connor, however, noted that “the Korean [Fair Trade Commission] has the best record of anti-cartel enforcement in Asia.”1 In this article, we examine several datasets to investigate whether antitrust enforcement in Korea, especially anti-cartel activity, has had a price-limiting impact over the past couple of decades. We compare the behavior of firms and industries that have been subject to antitrust investigation to those that have not. We examine the response of the firms and industries under antitrust investigation following the cases. The results presented here are consistent across two very different data sets of indicators for the Korean economy. The results suggest that long-term deterrence is unlikely to be observed from antitrust investigations, although the impact on short-term price and profit margin may be expected. However, the stronger effects observed suggest that firms in Korea have begun to pay more attention to the actions of the Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) over the past decade since the more rigorous enforcement of antitrust.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/joclec/nhv028 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Deterrence Effects of Korean Antitrust Enforcement on Producer Prices and Profit Margins (2014)
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:oup:jcomle:v:11:y:2015:i:4:p:917-933.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Competition Law and Economics is currently edited by Nicholas Economides, Amelia Fletcher, Michal Gal, Damien Geradin, Ioannis Lianos and Tommaso Valletti

More articles in Journal of Competition Law and Economics from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().