THE LAW AND THE ECONOMICS OF MARKET COLLUSION IN EUROPE, GREAT BRITAIN, AND THE UNITED STATES: AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.

EUROPE; UNITED Kingdom; UNITED States

The article focuses on the law and the economics of market collusion. Sellers apprehended for rigging markets have been brought before courts from the earliest recorded civilizations to the present, but the policy of the law towards collusive practices has varied widely from one epoch to another and, at any given time, from one society to another. The differences in the various laws are essentially differences, first, in the amount of tolerance shown towards industry collusion and, second, in the discretionary powers which courts have and in the criteria which courts use to discriminate between legal and illegal collusive activities. Fundamentally, it is an issue of economic policy, and because the issue is economic, the article compares from the standpoint of an economist the limits of tolerance for collusive activities, the criteria of legality, and the areas of discretionary power, which may be found in the laws of several major countries at the present time. A comparison of alternative economic policies toward collusive activities of firms provides a sort of experimental test of these policies.