Antitrust and the “Beckerian Propositionâ€: the effects of investigation and fines on cartels

Subhasish Chowdhury and Frederick Wandschneider

Chapter 14 in Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization, 2018, pp 368-403 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: To deter and punish illegal collusions antitrust authorities run costly investigations and levy fines on detected and convicted wrongdoers. According to Becker (1968) the magnitude of fines and the detection rates are substitutable in their deterrence effect. We investigate this proposition through a market experiment and study the effects of different fine and detection rate combinations (with constant expected fines) on cartel activity, prices and cartel stability. Our results show that in the absence of a leniency program, complying with the Beckerian Proposition, detection rates and fines are indeed substitutable in deterring cartels. With a leniency program, however, due to behavioral bias a regime that embodies low detection rate and high fine lowers the overall incidence of cartelization. The market price in this regime is also significantly lower than in a high detection rate–low fine regime. Finally, irrespective of the presence of a leniency program, the different detection rate–fine combinations do not affect the cartel stability. These findings indicate that antitrust agencies can rely on behavioral biases to economize on enforcement costs and achieve a higher degree of deterrence by reducing investigative efforts and increasing the fine level.

Keywords: Economics and Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781784718978/9781784718978.00021.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

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:elg:eechap:16609_14

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().