摘要:

The total number of cases that the Antitrust Division has filed during the past decade has increased, but the number of significant criminal price‐fixing cases has declined. Policy changes have had significant effects on other areas of enforcement. This paper argues, however, that the decline in this dimension of antitrust enforcement can be explained by a 1974 act of Congress that increased criminal penalties for price‐fixing violations from the misdemeanor level to the felony level. According to this argument, the stiffer penalties' deterrent impact has reduced the supply of antitrust violations. In this respect, the analysis highlights the flaws in measuring the strength of enforcement from the frequency of cases filed. In addition, the paper reports empirical evidence from a multinomial logit model of defendant plea choice indicating that the felony penalties encourage defendants to plead not guilty more frequently. Furthermore, data on the outcomes of criminal antitrust cases reveal that the government has greater difficulty in obtaining convictions when felony penalties apply. From the viewpoint of enforcers, these findings imply that detecting and prosecuting significant price‐fixing violations is more difficult. This, in turn, helps explain the reduction in related private enforc

ISSN:1074-3529    

DOI:10.1111/j.1465-7287.1989.tb00572.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This article examines price fixing and bid rigging by applying the theory of the economics of crime to explain the calculus of the individual decision maker in the firm. This approach departs somewhat from the traditional approach to investigations of collusion. The latter has emphasized market structure and firm interrelationships while it has ignored the characteristics of the firm itself. But analyses ignoring firm organizational and financial structure are incomplete insomuch as these factors are crucial to the incentives and costs that the decision maker confronts. This paper offers an alternative approach in which price‐fixing and bid‐rigging offenders' prominent characteristics apparently are mirrored in defendant firms and individuals that the Antitrust Division has prosecuted recen

ISSN:1074-3529    

DOI:10.1111/j.1465-7287.1989.tb00573.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Recently enacted sentencing guidelines were designed to reduce disparity and to increase the average sanction for white‐collar offenders. Whether these outcomes will be achieved, however, depends on how closely judges adhere to the new guidelines. We cannot yet determine how the guidelines will be implemented but can learn much about judicial behavior by studying past sentencing practice.This paper examines sentences imposed on criminal antitrust offenders from 1955 to 1980. Judges are appointed for life and ostensibly are “independent” of the political process. The data suggest, however, that judges do not operate in apolitical vacuum. When Congress increased the status of antitrust violations from misdemeanor to felony in 1974, judges responded by doling out higher penalties–even for offenders not subject to new higher statutory maximums. In addition, the paper shows that Republican judges tend to impose harsher antitrust penalties than do Democratic judges, and that sentencing behavior apparently is influenced by a judge's prospect of promotion to a higher court position. These findings have important policy implications both for the judicial selection process and for ensuring that the judicial branch follows congressional

ISSN:1074-3529    

DOI:10.1111/j.1465-7287.1989.tb00574.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Over the past 50 years, the rapid transformation of agricultural technology has provided the benefits of lower prices and a smaller share of income spent on food. Developing and applying synthetic chemicals was instrumental in lowering costs of production and in increasing yields. Conventional agriculture today relies on substantial use of synthetic chemicals as key inputs. This leads to increasing concern over negative externalities, including risks to both human health and the environment. In response to these concerns, organic food has emerged as a rapidly expanding industry. This paper examines the role of organic agriculture and other low‐input farming methods more sustainable within the context of policies designed to reduce negative externalities from using synthetic chemical

ISSN:1074-3529    

DOI:10.1111/j.1465-7287.1989.tb00575.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The New Zealand government recently announced a rather far‐reaching policy of deregulation and reorganization of certain governmental entities, including electricity generation and transmission. Electricorp, a state‐owned enterprise whose actions will be subject to a standard of commercial efficiency, has been formed to take over these functions and to sell bulk power at wholesale to localized distribution entities–who then will resell it at retail. Electricorp will be unregulated but subject to antitrust jurisdiction, as will be the distribution entities. Neither Electricorp nor the distributors will have any protected monopoly status. Substantial possibilities exist for competition in both bulk power and retail power markets over the long run, and one has reason to be optimistic that antitrust can deal with the remaining monopoly issues. New Zealand's radical deregulation yields favorable inferences about the outcome of the somewhat slower deregulation of electricity in the United S

ISSN:1074-3529    

DOI:10.1111/j.1465-7287.1989.tb00576.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The emergence of record current‐account and fiscal deficits in the United States during the 1980s draws increasing attention to what has become known as the “twin deficit” problem. Conventional wisdom is that a shift to larger government deficits entails a decline in government saving and results in larger trade deficits, Persistently large trade deficits are troublesome because they imply a transfer of wealth to foreigners and possibly a reduction in future generations' living standards.This paper examines whether post‐World War II data for the United States reveal a long‐run secular relationship between the trade deficit and the fiscal deficit. The focus is on the secular relationship since that is the one most relevant to long‐run policy concerns. The authors employ three different statistical techniques: (i) a deterministic technique for separating the secular components from the cyclical components to derive secular measures of the twin deficits, (ii) a stochastic procedure to isolate the secular components, (Hi) cointegration analysis to test for a long‐run equilibrium relationship.The authors conclude that, based on the first two approaches, evidence of a positive secular relationship between the twin deficits exists only under flexible exchange rates. This relationship appears quite strong–that is, a $1 change in the fiscal deficit eventually leads to roughly a $1 change in the trade deficit. On the other hand, findings based on cointegration analysis indicate no long‐run equilibrium relationship between the twin deficits. This latter finding, however, may reflect a low power of the relevant statistical tests stemming from the shortness of

ISSN:1074-3529    

DOI:10.1111/j.1465-7287.1989.tb00577.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The term “supply‐sider” has come to mean someone who believes that an x percent cut in tax rates walkthrough its effect on the incentive to work, to save and invest, and to avoid and evade taxes–lead to much less than an x percent cut, and perhaps even to an increase, in tax revenues. Not all economists are supply‐siders in this sense, but many more are now than were during the 1970s. The reason for the switch is the evidence that has accumulated on the incentive effects of taxes. Many studies have shown that cuts in tax rates for the highest‐income taxpayers actually have increased the government's revenue. A key reason for this effect is not a large elasticity of labor supply but rather a large elasticity of tax avoidance with respect to tax rates. The most important policy implication of this evidence is that the government cannot increase its revenue substantially without taxing t

ISSN:1074-3529    

DOI:10.1111/j.1465-7287.1989.tb00578.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1989

数据来源: WILEY