Global Price Fixing

Some books get written, others write themselves. This book is the latter type. I have devoted myselfto studying the economic organization of industries related to food and agriculture for almost twenty-five years. It has been my good fortune to work at places that tolerated my gadfly approach to research. So long as I produced a few publications each year and wooed a few graduate students to share those interests, I was free to pursue an array of topics: why firms diversifY, the competitive role of advertising, strategies for selling in overseas markets, measuring market power, and many others. Although firmly anchored in the eclectic analytical framework of industrial economics and focused on the food system, I traversed a wide field at will. Some years ago, I had pretty much convinced myself that naked price fixing was not a high priority for scholarship in these industries. True, collusion was rife in a few food industries, such as bid-rigging among suppliers of fluid milk to school districts in isolated rural districts. Ripping off milk money from school children is reprehensible enough, but the size of the economic losses from localized price fixing paled besides other sources of imperfect competition.

`...an immense and marvelous book...[written in a style] ...that entertains as well as informs [and that] should become a basic resource for almost everyone interested in industrial organization economics. Professor Connor's treatise ...is skillfully written and meticulously researched, providing readers with seldom-seen glimpses into the development, maintenance, discovery, and, ultimately, punishment... [of price-fixing conspiracies.]'
Review of Industrial Organization

Auteur
John M. Connor is Professor of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. He has served as head of food manufacturing research in the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Texte du rabat

The goal of emGlobal Price Fixing/em is to describe and analyze the origins, operation, and impacts of global cartels in the markets for lysine, citric acid, and vitamins. The work is fundamentally a historical approach to understanding the interplay among personal motivations, economic forces, and the enforcement of the competition laws of the major industrial nations. br/ The first chapter highlights the renewed importance of international price-fixing conspiracies after an absence of nearly 50 years. Two following chapters provide background on the economics theory and legal principles relevant to understanding cartels. Nine following chapters comprise the economic core of this book. Three chapters are devoted to each of the three cartels selected for intensive study: citric acid, lysine, and vitamins. The next four chapters then concentrate on the legal fallout from the discovery of the three cartels by the world's antitrust authorities. Chapter 17 provides a description of a few additional selected cartels with features not found in the lysine, citric acid, and vitamins cases. The penultimate chapter considers whether the antitrust resources of government agencies and private plaintiffs are sufficient to deter global price fixing in the foreseeable future. This final chapter attempts to identify major themes that appear throughout the book and to provide a summary of the ultimate impact of the global-cartel pandemic of the 1990s.

Contenu

1. Introduction.- Purpose and Scope.- Importance of the Cases.- Sources and Methods.- Organization.- 2. The Economics of Price Fixing.- Basic Theory.- Price Fixing Defined.- Cartel Theory.- Conditions Facilitating Collusion.- Effects of Collusion.- Cartel Histories.- 3. Anticartel Laws and Enforcement.- Market Power.- The Sherman Act.- Prosecuting Price Fixing.- Anticartel Enforcement Abroad.- International Cooperation.- 4. The Citric Acid Industry.- The Product.- Technology and Early Development.- Market Size and Growth.- The Structure of Production.- Members of the Cartel.- International Trade Patterns.- Costs of Production.- Selling Practices.- 5. The Citric Acid Conspiracy.- Triggering Events13.- Meetings and Methods13.- Citric Acid Price Movements.- The Role of Cargill.- The China Problem.- The Cartel Is Unmasked.- 6. Economic Impacts of the Citric Acid Cartel.- Price Effects.- Effects on Production.- Effects on International Trade.- The Customer Overcharge.- Conclusions.- 7. The World Lysine Industry.- The Product and Its Uses.- Technology of Production.- History of the Industry.- Market Size and Growth.- Structure of Supply in the 1990s.- Members of the Cartel.- International Trade and Investment.- Selling Practices.- 8. The Lysine Conspiracy.- The Price War of 19911992.- Meetings and Methods.- The Cartel is Unmasked.- 9. Economic Effects of the Lysine Cartel.- Price Effects.- Production Effects.- Effects on International Trade.- Effects on Profits.- The Customer Overcharge.- Conclusions.- 10. The Global Vitamins Industry.- Origins of the Industry.- Companies.- Market Structure.- Market Size and Growth.- Trade and Location of Production.- 11. The Vitamins Conspiracies.- Formation of the Cartels.- Global Cartel Connections.- How the Conspiracies WereOrganized.- 12. Effects of the Vitamins Cartel.- Price Effects.- Profits.- Customer Overcharges.- 13. U.S. Government Prosecution of the Cartels.- The Antitrust Division.- The Biggest Mole Ever Seen.- Enter the FBI.- The Grand Juries3.- The FBI Raids.- The Lysine Guilty Pleas.- The Citric Acid Prosecutions.- Prosecution of the Vitamins Cartels.- High Fructose Corn Syrup: The Forgotten Cartel?.- Impact on Civil Cases.- Were the Fines High Enough?.- 14. Antitrust Prosecutions by Foreign Governments.- Lysine.- Citric Acid.- Vitamins.- 15. The Chicago Criminal Trial.- The Main Issues.- Pre-Trial Motions.- The Trial Opens.- Witnesses for the Prosecution.- The End Game.- The Verdict.- The Sentencing Phase.- 16. The Civil Suits.- The Federal Lysine Case.- The Federal Citric Acid Case.- The Federal Corn Sweeteners Cases.- The Vitamins Cases.- Indirect Purchasers' Cases.- Effectiveness of Civil Antitrust Penalties.- 17. More Global Cartels.- Food-and-Feed Ingredients.- Other Global Cartels.- More Cartels to Come?.- Corporate Recidivism.- 18. The Business of Fighting Cartels.- A Boon for Law Firms.- Can the Antitrust Agencies Cope?.- Are New Laws Needed?.- Antitrust Sanctions: An Overall Appraisal.- 19. Global Price Fixing: Summing Up.- Market Structure Matters.- Escalating Antitrust Sanctions and Deterrence.- Financial Impacts of Antitrust Sanctions.- Corporate Governance Structures.- The Fate of Individual Conspirators.- The Social Costs of Global Cartels.- Antitrust Prosecutors: Methods and Reputations.- An Antitrust Tragedy.- References.