Should Crisis Cartels Exist amid Crises?

In: The Antitrust bulletin: the journal of American and foreign antitrust and trade regulation, Volume 55, Issue 4, p. 727-758

Abstract

Crisis cartels are likely to appear in industries where production facilities are durable and specialized and consumer demand falls due to adverse market conditions. A number of antitrust statutes incorporate exemptions as a means of avoiding condemnation of certain cartelistic conduct. Such statutes include provisions that specifically exempt certain enterprises and conduct from the scope of the antitrust legislation because of the overriding social objectives behind antitrust statutes. In the European Union the problem of structural overcapacity after the second oil shock was exacerbated by increased competition at an international level that induced further reductions in capacity utilization in some industries. Such capacity reductions may not represent reductions of the least efficient capacity. Thus, agreements among competitors to reduce capacity are likely to lead to better long term prospects for the economy. The EU and U.S. authorities have also accepted the financial constraints argument in their assessment of cartels and have thus been lenient on the imposed fines.