Master's Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Economy - Theory of
Competition, Competition Policy, grade: 1,0, University of Heidelberg
(Alfred-Weber-Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaften), language:
English, abstract: In the thesis, the goal is to examine which
determinants have life-shortening or lifeprolonging effects on cartel
duration by considering an up-to-date record of 123 cartel cases
convicted by European Commission. The main goal is firstly to replicate
the analyses by Hellwig and Hüschelrath on cartel level and secondly to
extend their analyses by incorporating new covariates related to either
internal enforcement methods and demand volatility. The paper at hand is
methodologically in line with previous literature since it uses several
Cox proportional hazard specifications and evaluates the findings to
different natural death definitions. Furthermore, it also provides
nonparametric Kaplan-Meier survival estimates of all categorical
variables and estimates time-varying covariates by a piecewise-constant
exponential PH model. Over 28 billion Euro fines imposed by the European
competition authority (ECA) in 135 decisions between 1990 and 2018, of
which the majority took place after the turn of the millennial,
underline that the fight against cartels is far from over. The
anticompetitive practices of cartels can lead to increased consumer
prices and remain an important point on the agenda of antitrust
authorities. As a reaction, the competition policy of the ECA has
undergone several changes in the last decades, most prominently
observable by the introduction of the EU corporate leniency program in
1996 and its modification ten years later. Almost all of the current
cartels are detected by leniency applications of one of their members
because whistle blowing policies allow cartel members to get reductions
in fines when they self-report the committed infringements. Before the
implementation of these policies, the most crucial threat for internal
ca
