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This article is about the legal term. For other uses, see Cartel (disambiguation).

A cartel is a formal (explicit) agreement among firms. Cartels usually occur in an oligopolistic industry, where there are a small number of sellers and usually involve homogeneous products. An oligopoly is a Market form in which a Market or Industry is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists A commodity is anything for which there is demand but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market Cartel members may agree on such matters as price fixing, total industry output, market shares, allocation of customers, allocation of territories, bid rigging, establishment of common sales agencies, and the division of profits or combination of these. Price fixing is an agreement between business competitors to sell the same product or service at the same price Market share, in Strategic management and Marketing, is the percentage or proportion of the total available Market or Market segment that is Bid rigging is an illegal agreement between two or more competitors The aim of such collusion is to increase individual member's profits by reducing competition. Collusion is an agreement usually secretive which occurs between two or more persons to deceive mislead or defraud others of their legal rights or to obtain an objective forbidden Competition laws forbid cartels. Identifying and breaking up cartels is an important part of the competition policy in most countries, although proving the existence of a cartel is rarely easy, as firms are usually not so careless as to put agreements to collude on paper. [1][2]

Several economic studies and legal decisions of antitrust authorities have found that the median price increase achieved by cartels in the last 200 years is around 25%. Private international cartels (those with participants from two or more nations) had an average price increase of 28%, whereas domestic cartels averaged 18%. Less than 10% of all cartels in the sample failed to raise market prices.

Contents

Private vs public cartel

A distinction needs to be drawn between public and private cartels. In the case of public cartels, the government may establish and enforce the rules relating to prices, output and other such matters. Export cartels and shipping conferences are examples of public cartels. In Economics, an export is any good or Commodity, Transported from one country to another country in a Legitimate fashion In many countries, depression cartels have been permitted in industries deemed to be requiring price and production stability and/or to permit rationalization of industry structure and excess capacity. In Economics, rationalization is an attempt to change a pre-existing Ad hoc Workflow into one that is based on a set of published rules Capacity Utilization measures the rate at which a firm makes use of their capital productive capacities such as factories and machinery In Japan for example, such arrangements have been permitted in the steel, aluminum smelting, ship building and various chemical industries. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. Steel is an Alloy consisting mostly of Iron, with a Carbon content between 0 WikipediaNaming See also Shipbuilding (song. Shipbuilding is the construction of Ships It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a The chemical industry comprises the companies that produce industrial chemicals Public cartels were also permitted in the United States during the Great Depression in the 1930s and continued to exist for some time after World War II in industries such as coal mining and oil production. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including Coal mining is the extraction or removal of Coal from the Earth by Mining. The petroleum industry includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transporting (often by Oil tankers and pipelines Cartels have also played an extensive role in the German economy during the inter-war period. Germany is one of the world's most advanced market economies. International commodity agreements covering products such as coffee, sugar, tin and more recently oil (OPEC) are examples of international cartels which have publicly entailed agreements between different national governments. Commodity markets are markets where raw or primary products are exchanged CoFFEE is an Open source Software for computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL in a digital classroom Sugar is a class of edible Crystalline substances mainly Sucrose, Lactose, and Fructose. Tin is a Chemical element with the symbol Sn (stannum and Atomic number 50 An oil is a substance that is in a viscous Liquid state ( "oily") at ambient temperatures or slightly warmer and is The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC) is a Cartel of thirteen countries made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador Crisis cartels have also been organized by governments for various industries or products in different countries in order to fix prices and ration production and distribution in periods of acute shortages.

In contrast, private cartels entail an agreement on terms and conditions from which the members derive mutual advantage but which are not known or likely to be detected by outside parties. Private cartels in most jurisdictions are viewed as being illegal and in violation of antitrust laws. [3]

Long-term unsustainability of cartels

The reason why cartels are not sustainable is well-explained by the prisoner's dilemma. The Prisoner's Dilemma constitutes a problem in Game theory. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher The dilemma reads as follows:

Two suspects, A and B, are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal: if one testifies for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both stay silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must make the choice of whether to betray the other or to remain silent. However, neither prisoner knows for sure what choice the other prisoner will make. So this dilemma poses the question: How should the prisoners act?

The dilemma can be summarized thus:

Prisoner B Stays Silent Prisoner B Betrays
Prisoner A Stays Silent Each serves six months Prisoner A serves ten years
Prisoner B goes free
Prisoner A Betrays Prisoner A goes free
Prisoner B serves ten years		 Each serves five years

As can be seen, by staying silent (cooperating) both prisoners are better off than in the case where both decide to betray (deviate from the agreement, that is, competing). Nevertheless, if only one of the two prisoners betray while the other stays silent, the former would be free, which is still more desirable for him than having to stay in prison for six months. Exactly the same occurs in a cartel: while their members are better-off being part to the agreement than competing, deviating (for example by reducing one's price) could imply capturing a big amount of the market demand and making big profits. In other words, the members of a cartel always have an incentive to deviate from their agreement which explains why cartels are generally difficult to sustain in the long run. Empirical studies of 20th century cartels have determined that the mean duration of discovered cartels is from 5 to 8 years. The twentieth century of the Common Era began on However, once a cartel is broken, the incentives to form the cartel return and the cartel may be re-formed.

Whether the members of a cartel will choose to cheat on the agreement will depend on whether the short term returns to cheating outweigh the medium and long term losses which result from the possible breakdown of the cartel (this is why, also in the Prisoner's dilemma game, the equilibrium varies if the game is played once or if it is, instead, a repeated game). The relative size of these two factors depend in part on how difficult it is for firms to monitor whether the agreement is being adhered to and on the importance of short-run gains relative to the long-run gain. The longer the time firms in the cartel can cheat without detection, the greater the gains from doing so. Therefore, if monitoring is difficult, the higher the probability that some part to the agreement will cheat and the more unsustainable the cartel will be.

There are several factors that will affect the firms' ability to monitor a cartel:[4]

  1. Number of firms in the industry.
  2. Characteristics of the products sold by the firms.
  3. Production costs of each member.
  4. Behaviour of demand.
  5. Frequency of sales and their characteristics.

Number of firms in industry

The lower the number of firms in the industry, the easier for the members of the cartel to monitor the behaviour of other members. Given that detecting a price cut becomes harder as the number of firms increases, the bigger are the gains from price cutting.

The larger the number of firms the more probable one of those firms being a maverick firm, that is, a firm known for pursuing aggressive and independent pricing strategy. Even in the case of a concentrated market, with few firms, the existence of such a firm may undermine the collusive behaviour of the cartel. [5]

Characteristics of products sold

Whether the products sold by cartels are homogeneous or differentiated also will affect the ability of monitoring and therefore the long-term sustainability of the cartel. A commodity is anything for which there is demand but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market In Marketing, product differentiation (also known simply as "differentiation" is the process of distinguishing the differences of a product or offering Not only do homogeneous products make agreement on prices and/or quantities easier but also they facilitate monitoring. If goods are homogeneous, firms know that a change in their market share is more likely due to a price cut (or quantity increase) by another member. Market share, in Strategic management and Marketing, is the percentage or proportion of the total available Market or Market segment that is Instead, if products are differentiated, changes in quantity sold by a member may be due to changes in consumer preferences or demand. In the first case, change in one firm's demand is clearly due to cheating by another member, whereas in the second case members may well not be cheating and still demand patterns change. [6]

Production costs

Similar cost structures by the firms in a cartel make it easier to co-ordinate given that the firms will have similar maximizing behaviour as regards prices and output. Instead, if firms have different cost structures then each will have different maximizing behaviour and therefore will have an incentive to price or produce a different quantity. Changes in cost structure (for example when a firm introduces a new technology) also gives a cost advantage over rivals, making co-ordination and sustainability more difficult. [7]

Behaviour of demand

If an industry is characterised by a varying demand (that is, a demand with cyclical fluctuations) this makes it more difficult for the firms in the cartel to detect whether such changes are due to demand fluctuations or to cheating by another member of the cartel. Therefore, in a market with demand fluctuations, monitoring is more difficult. [8]

Characteristics of sales

As said, short-term gains from cheating (relative to long-term gains from collusion) make it more likely that a member will cheat. These short-term gains will partly depend on the frequency and amount of sales. If sales are not frequent (for example in some bidding markets where firms may have ten selling contracts) then the firms in a cartel may have an incentive to undercut the price of other sellers and win the contract (given that overall they know they will be few possible contracts). Moreover, the higher the amount of output to sell the higher the incentive for the firm to cheat. Therefore, low frequency of sales coupled with huge amounts of output in each of these sales make cartels less sustainable. [9]

Antitrust law on cartels

General view

International competition authorities forbid cartels, but the effectiveness of cartel regulation and antitrust law in general is disputed by economic libertarians. Economic liberalism is the Economic component of Classical liberalism. [10]

United States

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 outlawed all contracts, combinations and conspiracies that unreasonably restrain interstate and foreign trade. The Sherman Antitrust Act ( Sherman Act, July 2, 1890, ch 647,) was the first United States Federal statute to limit Cartels and Year 1890 ( MDCCCXC) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common This includes cartel violations, such as price fixing, bid rigging and customer allocation. Price fixing is an agreement between business competitors to sell the same product or service at the same price Bid rigging is an illegal agreement between two or more competitors Sherman Act violations involving agreements between competitors are usually punishable as criminal felonies. In Common law legal systems a felony is a serious Crime, often contrasted with a Misdemeanor. [11]

European Union

The EU's competition law explicitly forbids cartels and related practices in its article 81 of the Treaty of Rome. The European Union ( EU) is a political and economic union of twenty-seven member states, located primarily in The article reads:

1. The following shall be prohibited as incompatible with the common market: all agreements between undertakings, decisions by associations of undertakings and concerted practices which may affect trade between Member States and which have as their object or effect the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition within the common market, and in particular those which:

(a) directly or indirectly fix purchase or selling prices or any other trading conditions;
(b) limit or control production, markets, technical development, or investment;
(c) share markets or sources of supply;
(d) apply dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage;
(e) make the conclusion of contracts subject to acceptance by the other parties of supplementary obligations which, by their nature or according to commercial usage, have no connection with the subject of such contracts.
2. Any agreements or decisions prohibited pursuant to this article shall be automatically void.
3. The provisions of paragraph 1 may, however, be declared inapplicable in the case of:
- any agreement or category of agreements between undertakings,
- any decision or category of decisions by associations of undertakings,
- any concerted practice or category of concerted practices,
(a) impose on the undertakings concerned restrictions which are not indispensable to the attainment of these objectives;
(b) afford such undertakings the possibility of eliminating competition in respect of a substantial part of the products in question.

Article 81 explicitly forbids price fixing and limitation/control of production, the two more frequent cartel-types of collusion. Price fixing is an agreement between business competitors to sell the same product or service at the same price The EU competition law also has regulations on the amount of fines for each type of cartel and a leniency policy by which if a firm in a cartel is the first to denounce the collusion agreement it is free of any responsibility. The European Union ( EU) is a political and economic union of twenty-seven member states, located primarily in This mechanism has helped a lot in detecting cartel agreements in the EU.

Examples

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

Examples of prosecuted international cartels are lysine, citric acid, graphite electrodes and bulk vitamins. Adam Smith ( baptised 16 June 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of Political economy. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the Magnum opus of the Scottish economist Adam Smith. Year 1776 ( MDCCLXXVI) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Lysine (abbreviated as Lys or K) is an α- Amino acid with the Chemical formula HO2CCH(NH2(CH24NH2 Citric acid is a weak organic Acid. It is a natural Preservative and is also used to add an acidic or sour taste to foods and Soft drinks The Mineral graphite, as with Diamond and Fullerene, is one of the Allotropes of carbon. An electrode is an Electrical conductor used to make contact with a nonmetallic part of a circuit (e A vitamin is an Organic compound required as a Nutrient in tiny amounts by an Organism. An example of a new international cartel is the one created by the members of the Asian Racing Federation and documented in the Good Neighbor Policy signed on September 1, 2003. The Asian Racing Federation is an international federation of Horse racing governing bodies in Asia, most of which are government granted monopolies. Events 462 - Possible start of first Byzantine indiction cycle. Year 2003 ( MMIII) was a Common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. Other well-known examples include:

See also

External links

References

  1. ^ Khemani, R. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC) is a Cartel of thirteen countries made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador De Beers and the various companies within the De Beers Family of Companies engage in exploration for diamonds, diamond mining diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacture Collusion is an agreement usually secretive which occurs between two or more persons to deceive mislead or defraud others of their legal rights or to obtain an objective forbidden An oligopoly is a Market form in which a Market or Industry is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists Tacit Collusion occurs when Cartels are illegal or overt collusion is absent Anti-copyright refers to the complete or partial opposition to prevalent Copyright laws. Drug cartels are Criminal organizations developed with the primary purpose of promoting and controlling drug trafficking operations The Phoebus cartel was a Cartel of among others Osram, Philips and General Electric is a Japanese term referring to industrial and financial business conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed for control over significant A competition regulator is a Government agency, typically a statutory authority, sometimes called an economic regulator, which regulates and enforces Economic regulators are usually the agencies established by central government for the control of or intervention in the operation of markets according to public interest principles Industrial Organization is a field of Economics that studies the strategic behavior of firms the structure of Markets and their interactions The denomination Organisation of Rice Exporting Countries ( OREC) describes a project of a small group of South-East Asian countries to create a homonymous S. and D. M. Shapiro (1993): Glossary of Industrial Organisation Economics and Competition Law. Compiled by R. S. Khemani and D. M. Shapiro, commissioned by the Directorate for Financial, Fiscal and Enterprise Affairs, OECD, 1993. Downloadable [1].
  2. ^ Economics A-Z. Glossary of Economic Terms done by www. economist. com. Term can be seen here
  3. ^ Khemani, R. S. and D. M. Shapiro (1993): Glossary of Industrial Organisation Economics and Competition Law. Compiled by R. S. Khemani and D. M. Shapiro, commissioned by the Directorate for Financial, Fiscal and Enterprise Affairs, OECD, 1993. Downloadable [2].
  4. ^ Bishop and Walker (1999).
  5. ^ Bishop and Walker (1999).
  6. ^ Bishop and Walker (1999).
  7. ^ Bishop and Walker (1999).
  8. ^ Bishop and Walker (1999).
  9. ^ Bishop and Walker (1999).
  10. ^ Regulation Magazine Vol. 12 No. 2
  11. ^ Antitrust Enforcement and the Consumer U. S. Department of Justice

Bibliography

Dictionary

cartel

-noun

  1. A group of businesses that collude to limit competition within an industry or market.
  2. A combination of political groups (notably parties) for common action
  3. A written letter of defiance or challenge.
  4. An official agreement concerning the exchange of prisoners.
  5. (nautical) A ship used to negotiate with an enemy in time of war, and to exchange prisoners.
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