International Cartels
INTRODUCTION
A cartel is a group of formally independent producers whose goal it is to fix prices, to limit supply and to limit competition. Cartels are prohibited by antitrust laws in most countries; however, they continue to exist nationally and internationally, formally and informally. A single entity that holds a monopoly cannot be a cartel, though it may be guilty of abusing said monopoly in other ways. As such, it is inaccurate to describe (for example) Microsoft or AT&T as cartels. Cartels usually occur in oligopolies, where there are a small number of sellers.
In general, cartels are economically unstable in that there is a great incentive for members to cheat and to sell more than the quotas set by the cartel. This has caused many cartels that attempt to set product prices to be unsuccessful in the long term. Empirical studies of 20th century cartels have determined that the mean duration of discovered cartels is from 5 to 8 years. However, once a cartel is broken, the incentives to form the cartel return and the cartel may be re-formed. Publicly-known cartels that do not follow this cycle include the De Beers diamond cartel and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Of a sample of forty such cartels prosecuted by the United States and European Union in the 1990s, twenty-four lasted at least four years. And for the twenty cartels in this sample where sales data are available, the annual worldwide turnover in the affected products exceeded US$30billion. Prevailing national competition policies are oriented towards addressing harm done in domestic markets, and in some cases merely prohibit cartels without taking strong enforcement measures. There are a wide variety of organizations that could plausibly be described as international cartels, and to structure the analysis in this paper we distinguish between three types: Type 1 are the so-called "hard core" cartels made up of private producers from at least two countries who
A cartel is a group of formally independent producers whose goal it is to fix prices, to limit supply and to limit competition. Cartels are prohibited by antitrust laws in most countries; however, they continue to exist nationally and internationally, formally and informally. A single entity that holds a monopoly cannot be a cartel, though it may be guilty of abusing said monopoly in other ways. As such, it is inaccurate to describe (for example) Microsoft or AT&T as cartels. Cartels usually occur in oligopolies, where there are a small number of sellers.
In general, cartels are economically unstable in that there is a great incentive for members to cheat and to sell more than the quotas set by the cartel. This has caused many cartels that attempt to set product prices to be unsuccessful in the long term. Empirical studies of 20th century cartels have determined that the mean duration of discovered cartels is from 5 to 8 years. However, once a cartel is broken, the incentives to form the cartel return and the cartel may be re-formed. Publicly-known cartels that do not follow this cycle include the De Beers diamond cartel and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Of a sample of forty such cartels prosecuted by the United States and European Union in the 1990s, twenty-four lasted at least four years. And for the twenty cartels in this sample where sales data are available, the annual worldwide turnover in the affected products exceeded US$30billion. Prevailing national competition policies are oriented towards addressing harm done in domestic markets, and in some cases merely prohibit cartels without taking strong enforcement measures. There are a wide variety of organizations that could plausibly be described as international cartels, and to structure the analysis in this paper we distinguish between three types: Type 1 are the so-called "hard core" cartels made up of private producers from at least two countries who
Bibliography: 1) wikipedia 2) open website 3) article on "effect of international cartels on developing economies"