Antitrust enforcement regimes rely on two types of penalties for deterrence: penalties against the violating firm and penalties against the agents of the violating firm. In this paper I examine the economics of punishing agents versus firms. My area of application is antitrust, but the argument...

The treatment of innovation within the merger context by U.S. Antitrust Agencies continues to evolve, with regard to both general statements of enforcement policy and specific enforcement decisions. The respective merger guidelines issued by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade...

Antitrust enforcement in technology industries can be challenging: historical market information may have limited relevance, market shares may be unstable, and new entrants can be highly disruptive. Both the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have acknowledged the rigors of...

The idea of rewarding private parties who participate in the enforcement of public rules is not uncommon. Still, in the field of anti-cartel enforcement the policy of rewarding acts which are beneficial to the public is limited and typically takes the form of forgoing or reducing penalties under...

Predicting the future is difficult. Advances in economics and antitrust law's ability to incorporate such changes have been tremendous in the past 15 years. In 1985, Robert Zumekis' movie Back to the Future came out. In that movie, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travels back in time from 1985 to...

This essay sketches a new approach to ameliorating the problem of coordinating the use of private class actions and public policing to enforce American antitrust law. Achieving the optimal joint level of enforcement from any system that teams public and private law enforcers requires a...

The past and current reluctance of firms and individuals to use private enforcement suggests that there are limited incentives for self-help. The key contribution of private enforcement to overall deterrence derives from cases which would not otherwise be brought, not simply because of resource...

Based on a price setting duopoly model, this paper argues that collusion on managerial incentive compensation may have the equivalent effect to collusion on prices. This paper also provides an analysis of the effect of different antitrust fines regimes in the context of a game between two...

This paper investigates the design of a leniency policy to fight corporate crime. We explicitly take into account the agency problem within the firm. We model this through a three-tier hierarchy: authority, shareholder, and manager. The manager may breach the law and report evidence to the...