Global Price Fixing

I have devoted myself to studying the economic organization of industries for thirty years. It has been my good fortune to work at places that tol- ated my gadfly approach to research. So long as I produced a few publi- tions each year and wooed a few graduate students to share those interests, I was free to sample a smorgasbord of economic delights: why firms div- sify, the competitive role of advertising, strategies for selling in overseas markets, measuring market power, and many others. Although firmly - chored in the eclectic analytical framework of industrial economics and focused on the food system, I traversed a wide field at will. A decade ago I had pretty much convinced myself that naked price fixing was not a high priority for scholarship. True, collusion was rife in a few industries, such as bid-rigging among suppliers of fluid milk to school districts in isolated rural districts. Ripping off milk money from school children is reprehensible enough, but the size of the economic losses from localized price fixing paled besides other sources of imperfect competition. Moreover, there were no great policy debates about the wisdom or me- ods of enforcing the price-fixing prohibitions in the Nation's antitrust laws.

Contains a wealth of empirical information on recent international cartels and cartel prosecutions Relates the histories of cartels to economic and legal principles Assesses the effectiveness of anticartel enforcement and adequacy of current antitrust sanctions to deter cartel recidivism Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext
John M. Connor is Professor of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. He has served as head of food manufacturing research in the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Klappentext
The book describes and analyzes the formation, operation, and impacts of modern global cartels. It provides a broad picture of the economics, competition law and history of international price fixing. A deeper understanding of the phenomenon is afforded by intensive case studies of collusion in the markets for lysine, citric acid, and vitamins. Particular attention is given to the economic injuries sustained by the cartels' customers. The author assesses whether antitrust enforcement by the European Union, the United States, and other countries is capable of deterring cartels in the foreseeable future.

Inhalt
The Economics of Price Fixing.- Anticartel Laws and Enforcement.- The Citric Acid Industry.- The Citric Acid Conspiracy.- Economic Impacts of the Citric Acid Cartel.- The World Lysine Industry.- The Lysine Conspiracy.- Economic Effects of the Lysine Cartel.- The Global Vitamins Industries.- The Vitamins Conspiracies.- Effects of the Vitamins Cartels.- U.S. Government Prosecutions.- Antitrust Prosecutions Outside the United States.- The Civil Suits.- The Business of Fighting Cartels.- Global Price Fixing: Summing Up.