New Research on the Effectiveness of Bidding Rings: Implications for Competition Policies

By John M. Connor & Dan P. Werner – 

Empirical examinations into the determinants of cartel overcharges are limited in the economic literature. We review the economic literature on auction theory and summarize the empirical research on the determinants of cartel overcharges. Our own analysis finds that the price effects of bidding rings, controlling for industry fixed effects, are affected by buyer market concentration, seller industry concentration, and two temporal features (episodi