Abstract
Connor and Lande (Issues in competition law and policy, pp 2203–2218, 2008) conducted a survey of cartels and found a mean overcharge estimate in the range of 31–49 %. By examining more sources, Connor (Price-fixing overcharges, 2nd edn. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1610262, 2010) finds a mean of 50.4 % for successful cartels. However, the data that are used in those studies are estimates that are obtained from different methodologies, sources, and contexts rather than from direct observation. We conduct a meta-analysis of cartel overcharge estimates that provides a sound treatment of these matters and other data problems. We find a bias-corrected mean and median overcharge estimate of 15.47 and 16.01 %. Our results have significant antitrust policy implications.
Keywords
Antitrust; Cartel overcharges; Heckman correction; Antitrust Cartel overcharges; Kullback–Leibler divergence; Meta-analysis;
Replaces
Marcel Boyer, and Rachidi Kotchoni, “How Much Do Cartels Overcharge?”, TSE Working Paper, n. 14-462, January 31, 2014, revised July 2015.
Reference
Marcel Boyer, and Rachidi Kotchoni, “How Much Do Cartels Overcharge?”, Review of Industrial Organization, vol. 47, n. 2, September 2015, pp. 119–153.
Published in
Review of Industrial Organization, vol. 47, n. 2, September 2015, pp. 119–153