Abstract EN:

Our purpose is to explore and evaluate application of economic argument in the cases law of oligopolistics collusion. The particular interest is the most difficult issue in applying a legal perspective to identifying an agrument among competitors to fix prices when the evidence of agreement is entirely circumstantial. In particular, courts and commentators have debated for decades whether parallel price changes by oligopotistis who recognize their interdependence provide a sufficient basis for a court to infer an unlawful horizontal agreement. We examine whether game theory can contribue to the detection of collusion. We shows that game theory may aid antitrust analysis by incicating means througn which tacit collusion can be supported. Many of these means involve collusion that is supported by the threat of credible punishments for deviation. By understanding how collusion is implemented, potential remedies may be suggested. Also, knowledge of the means of collusion may indicate what characteristics are helpful in identifying its existence. Also, we suggest that the way of adressing oligopolic collusion problem involves merger enforcement. The prohibition againt anticompetitives mergers has long been undertood as aimed in large part at preventing mergers likely to enchance coordination. We shows that contempory economics does promise to permit courts and enforcers examining acquisitions to differentiate, in many cases, those mergers likely to make coordination worse from others mergers likely to destabilize coordination. To the extent such discrimination is possible, enforcers can improve their ability to target merger enforcement to address the collusion.