CCP’s fifth annual conference was another roaring success, with around 85 delegates from all over the world attending the two-day event at UEA’s Drama Studio. Where available, we will provide links to slides and related papers.

The first session, on cartels, featured Maarten Pieter Schinkel (University of Amsterdam) who spoke about ‘Cartel Damages: On The Commission’s Call for Simplified Rules on Estimating the Loss’ (supporting paper here); Maggie Levenstein (University of Michigan) who gave a presentation on ‘Determinants of Cartel Duration and the Role of Cartel Organization’ (supporting paper here); and Joe Harrington (Johns Hopkins University) who presented ‘Collusion with Monitoring Based on Self-Reported Sales’.

The second session focused on tacit collusion.  David Gilo  (Tel Aviv University) presented ‘Partial Cross Ownership and Tacit Collusion under Cost Asymmetries’; Christian Schultz (University of Copenhagen) discussed ‘Transparency on Both Sides of the Market and Tacit Collusion’; Okeoghene Odudu (Cambridge University) talked about ‘The Hub and Spoke Agreement: ABC Collusion’; and Rob Porter (Northwestern University) posed the question ‘Competition or Collusion in Recent Offshore Oil and Gas Bidding?’.

This year’s evening meal took place in the unique location of Dragon Hall, a medieval listed building in the heart of Norwich dating from around 1430.  The intricate and well-preserved architecture provided an impressive backdrop for guests to meet each other and learn about medieval Norwich.

Friday morning’s session detailed some current experimental research on collusion.  Hans Theo Normann (Goethe University) put forward his research on ‘Excess Capacity and Collusion in Bertrand-Edgeworth Markets: Experimental Evidence’.  Jeroen Hinloopen (University of Amsterdam) discussed his research on leniency programs: ‘Going Once, Going Twice, Reported! Cartel Activity and the Effectiveness of Leniency Programs in Experimental Auctions’. Kai-Uwe Kühn (University of Michigan) presented his research on ‘Communication, Renegotiation, and the Scope for Collusion’.



The final session provided an overview of CCP’s current research on the topics.  Robert Sugden presented ‘Salience and Tacit Collusion’, discussing how tacit bargaining problems are resolved and outlining an experimental design that a team of researchers at UEA is using to investigate the issue.  Andreas Stephan discussed ‘Why Antitrust Compliance Programmes May Be Ineffective at Preventing Cartels’, arguing that cartelists typically know that what they are doing is illegal and go to great lengths to avoid detection.  Stephen Davies presented ‘Tacit versus Overt Collusion: Firm Size Asymmetries and Numbers’, giving an overview of recent and ongoing work within CCP on the interface between tacit and overt collusion.

The Rt. Hon. Charles Clarke, MP for Norwich South, also addressed the audience: he was a a member of the cabinet when the UK Enterprise Act 2004 criminalised cartels (i.e. ringleaders could from then on be sent to prison), and he spoke about the political context for that decision.