The paper characterises the building blocks of a framework to enforce antipredation rules and subsequently evaluates selected enforcement options in a Cournot-type duopoly predation model. Differentiating between a no rule approach, an ex ante approach and two ex post approaches, it is shown...

The paper develops a methodology for the evaluation of competition policy. Based on the existing literature and experiences with policy evaluations in other areas of economic activity, the three-step / nine-building-blocks methodology provides guidance for evaluation projects and also assists in...

In 2002, the Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO) introduced a Notice on the Competitive Treatment of Vertical Restraints in Automobile Trade (‘Car Notice’). The objective of the Car Notice has been to strengthen competition in the Swiss car market, in particular by avoiding price-fixing...

We provide a comprehensive quantitative assessment of cartels and the related cartel enforcement process in the European Union (EU) from 2001 to 2015. In a first step, we present a detailed characterization of all cartel cases decided by the European Commission (EC) with respect to various...

The paper aims at assessing the costs and benefits of antitrust enforcement. The analysis starts with an investigation of why competition is typically worth protecting followed by a collection of empirical evidence which shows that competition actually needs protection by antitrust policy in...

Although the pricing dynamics of hardcore cartels have been studied intensively from a theoretical perspective, empirical evidence is still rare. We combine publicly available data with a unique private data set of about 340,000 market transactions from 36 smaller and larger customers of German...

While private actions for damages by customers against price-cartels receive much attention, the treatment of other groups affected by such conspiracies is largely unresolved. This article narrows the research gap with respect to suppliers to a downstream price cartel. First, we show that such...

We investigate the impact of cartel breakdowns on merger activity. Merging information on cartel cases decided by the European Commission (EC) between 2000 and 2011 with a detailed data set of worldwide merger activity, we find that, first, the average number of all merger transactions increase...