• Login
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • Graduate Theses, Dissertations and Projects
    • Queen's Graduate Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Home
    • Graduate Theses, Dissertations and Projects
    • Queen's Graduate Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Three Essays on Leniency Policies

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Cloutier_Michel_201408_PhD.pdf (521.7Kb)
    Date
    2014-08-26
    Author
    Cloutier, Michel
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    This thesis presents three papers in Competition Economics. The unifying theme is leniency policies from an international perspective; that is, I investigate theoretically and empirically the design and effectiveness of leniency policies in major jurisdictions: U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Section, European Commission's DG-COMP and Canada's Competition Bureau. A corporation (or an individual) may be granted a lenient treatment in terms of financial fine and/or jail time by confessing its (his/her) information about the collusive activity. Such policies aim at deterring and forcing desistance of this illegal practice. According to some metrics, leniency policies are very effective tools. Other metrics result in more nuanced conclusions, as tested. Using a standard method in industrial organization research with firm-level data, I estimate the effect on corporations' behavior from the amendment in 1993 of the U.S. Corporate Leniency Program. One key element for understanding the mechanisms driving a corporation's application for leniency lies in the nature of the information transferred from the applicant to the competition agency. I claim that by making the lenient fine conditional on this information, a competition agency will receive higher quality information and promote a higher welfare standard. The accrued savings in prosecution resources justifies the benefit of this conditioning. Another key element is the interaction of corporate and individual leniency policies. I claim that a competition agency should align its resources with the leniency policies in place based on two variables: the degree to which collusion affects the worker and the profit margin of collusion over the competitive level.
    URI for this record
    http://hdl.handle.net/1974/12378
    Collections
    • Queen's Graduate Theses and Dissertations
    • Department of Economics Graduate Theses
    Request an alternative format
    If you require this document in an alternate, accessible format, please contact the Queen's Adaptive Technology Centre

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2015  DuraSpace
    Contact Us
    Theme by 
    Atmire NV
     

     

    Browse

    All of QSpaceCommunities & CollectionsPublished DatesAuthorsTitlesSubjectsTypesThis CollectionPublished DatesAuthorsTitlesSubjectsTypes

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    View Usage StatisticsView Google Analytics Statistics

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2015  DuraSpace
    Contact Us
    Theme by 
    Atmire NV