NCAA Enforcement and Competitive Balance in College Football

This article investigates the effects of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) enforcement on the competitive balance of major college football conferences in the context of the standard empirical crime model. Using an unbalanced panel describing 11 major Division IA football conferences from 1953 through 2003, NCAA enforcement efforts, in the form of investigations and probations, and the severity of punishment, measured as the average length of probations imposed, are found to have opposite but not necessarily offsetting effects on competitive balance. Greater levels of enforcement in a conference improve competitive balance. On the other hand, greater severity of punishment reduces competitive balance. The empirical evidence indicates that these changes take approximately five years to be fully dissipated. Overall, the empirical results indicate that, on average, the net effect of NCAA enforcement is an improvement in competitive balance.     

Assessing the Effects of Antitrust Enforcement in the United States

Summary  This article reviews empirical evidence informing an assessment of cartel and merger antitrust enforcement in the United States and makes some reasonable inferences from it. It also explains why an objective assessment based on hard evidence is not possible for the critical deterrence effects of enforcement, or for any of the effects of enforcement against single-competitor exclusionary conduct. Finally, this article describes the reporting by the U.S. Department of Justice of consumer savings from its antitrust enforcement actions, and details the construction of the savings estimates from cartel and horizontal merger enforcement. The views expressed herein are not purported to represent those of the U.S. Department of Justice.     

Sanctions and Leniency to Individuals,and its Impact on Cartel Discoveries: Evidence from the Netherlands

Many competition authorities employ a leniency programme to fight cartels. We examine the impact of the introduction of sanctions and leniency for individuals responsible for the cartel, on the number of cartel discoveries. In our empirical study of the Dutch leniency programme, we find that this did not lead to more cartels being desisted as the number of cartel discoveries decreases over time. An analysis of characteristics of cartel members shows harsher enforcement after the revision, which indicates that the decrease in cartel discoveries is in line with higher cartel deterrence. Nevertheless, the number of cartel cases involving leniency actually decreases after the revision.     

The impact of big-time athletics on graduation rates

Conclusions Using the same universities with high-quality sports programs studied by McCormick and Tinsley, this paper qualifies their conclusion that big-time football enhances the academic mission through an advertising effect. While the advertising effect of an established big-time football winning tradition may attract a higher quality student to a university, there is a cost for some students once they enroll. Consistent with the adverse effect on output of faculty publications found in the Shughart, Tollison, and Goff study, this paper offers evidence that athletic success comes at the expense of some students who fail to graduate. Faced with the decision to study or engage in entertainment, the opportunity cost to students is higher when their football program is successful. If the football team is nationally ranked, there is greater incentive to talk football in the dorm, attend home games, cut Friday classes to take road trips to away games, including bowl games, and in general put off studying. In contrast, the evidence suggests that a big-time basketball program is unrelated to the graduation rate.     

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? or Measuring and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Competition Enforcement

Summary  This article surveys, discusses and classifies methods for ex-post evaluation of the efficiency of competition authorities: court appeals, peer reviews, case studies, event studies, (authorities’ own) bottom-up calculations of consumer gains, deadweight-loss estimates, cross-country panel studies etc. Based on empirical estimates from other types of studies and on a simple oligopoly model, one conclusion is that many bottom-up calculations are based on exaggerated estimates of gains from cartel enforcement, relative to those from merger enforcement. Another conclusion is that authorities’ ex-post self evaluations are of limited value, relative to external evaluations. “Who watches the guardians?”, by Juvenal, 2nd century Roman poet and critic.     

The JEC Revisited: Did Debt Undermine Stability?

The Joint Executive Committee (JEC), one of the most studied cartels in all of economics, was at best partially successful at maintaining collusion. The railroad cartel faced frequent breakdowns and re-contracting efforts. This paper considers the effects that large capital debt may have had on the members of the JEC. The JEC is compared to the express cartel of the period in which all firms were creditors. The latter had no breakdowns during the same period. It is shown through a small modification in an oligopolistic supergame that debt-burdened firms are less likely to maintain a stable cartel agreement than a cartel of creditors, a result that is consistent with the experience of these two cartels.

反垄断法中宽恕制度之消极适用主体研究——以卡特尔主要作用者的认定标准为中心

由于卡特尔行为具有严重的危害性和秘密性,许多国家采用宽恕制度来打击和威慑此类反竞争行为。出于公平考虑和防止宽恕制度被不当利用,各国反垄断法执行机构往往规定卡特尔主要作用者不能适用宽恕待遇。目前大体存在两种类型的卡特尔主要作用者认定标准即领导者适用标准和胁迫者适用标准。由于卡特尔领导者适用标准中领导者、发起者等在实践中很难界定以及该标准受到理论上的责难,一些原先采用该标准的国家后来采用了胁迫者适用标准,而另外一些采用卡特尔领导者适用标准的国家则对该标准进行修正。从最新的修正情况来看两标准存在趋同迹象。     

Market structure and the coal cartel in early nineteenth‐century England1

Using counterfactual competitive prices, the effect of the north‐east coal cartel on prices is estimated at 13–17 per cent between 1816 and 1845. Non‐cartel producers were highly responsive to price changes, and their threat to the cartel was made credible by market integration facilitated by canals. The spread of railways had little impact on the cartel's market power. Highly inelastic demand and responsive supply from other regions meant that deadweight losses from the cartel were insignificant throughout this period.     

Illegal Cartel Overcharges in Markets with a Legal Cartel History: Bitumen Prices in South Africa

In recent years, South African competition authorities have initiated a number of price‐fixing cases in markets where cooperation among competitors was legal and often encouraged. These markets present economists with special difficulties when estimating cartel overcharges. Conventional approaches often rely on temporal approaches, where pricing during the cartel period is compared with prices in a competitive period. In markets with a legal cartel history, a competitive price cannot be identified in the period preceding illegal collusion. Structural change also reduces data, and hence the robustness of temporal models. Spatial approaches, where prices are compared with those in other countries, offer a better alternative. The paper studies the performance of temporal and spatial approaches in estimating overcharge in the context of a bitumen price‐fixing case. The results suggest that, while the bitumen cartel may have responded to cost and demand shocks in a similar way to how players in more competitive markets respond, it was still cushioned by a large monopoly premium: the long‐run level of South African bitumen prices are higher than in comparable competitive markets. The findings have implications for the study of transition dynamics from legal to illegal cartel regimes and for the detection of cartels.     

Competition Policy: What are the Costs and Benefits of Measuring its Costs and Benefits?

Summary  Competition authorities are increasingly measuring the effects of their enforcement actions, seeking a robust justification for the proliferation of competition policy. We highlight the importance of identifying the right counterfactual against which to measure effects, and set out the relevant categories of costs and benefits. We then explore how a balance can be struck between the benefits and inherent limitations of these measurement exercises. Relatively crude analyses of cartel action benefits can be sufficient to achieve public legitimacy for competition policy. Assessing the effects of merger and conduct inquiries is often ambiguous, but could be used to improve decision-making processes. Director and Managing Consultant, respectively, at Oxera, Oxford and London. The valuable comments of Fod Barnes, Kerry Hughes and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors alone.     

城管暴力执法行为的法律规制

城市管理综合执法部门的暴力执法行为一直以来都备受诟病。在暴力执法的现象背后,有着深刻的制度问题根源。要解决这一问题,首先要对城管体制进行改革、对执法程序进行规范、对行政责任制度进行强化。同时,需要提高城管执法人员的素养,加强执法监督。     

创业型大学建设目标下教学主体激励机制研究

创业型大学建设目标越来越成为高校改革发展的重要选择。创业型发展模式的确立,必然要求在原有教学和科研领域引发相应变革,向创业型转型的微观基础是解决高校教学主体面向创业型大学建设目标的激励机制问题,其中教师是创业型大学的核心元素,对教学主体的激励问题尤为关键。从创业型大学的特色和发展模式认识出发,分析了创业型大学建设目标下的人才培养目标与教学要求,认为应着眼于倡导优胜劣汰、鼓励不拘一格创新、突出需求导向、扶持团队教研项目和强化业绩质量观,建立相应的教学体系激励机制。     

How brinkmanship saved Chadbourne: Credibility and the International Sugar Agreement of 1931

Theories of cartel stability assume detection is uncertain, but also unambiguous. Recent empirical studies find that cartel agreements are contractually incomplete. If so, whether an action constitutes violation may be ambiguous. While theory emphasizes the ineffectiveness of agreements that are not fully specified ex ante, recent research shows that stable cartels may often renegotiate terms to eliminate loopholes caused by incompleteness. Naturally, renegotiations can lead to breakdowns, but sometimes threats of breakdown are resolved. This paper examines the strategy adopted by Cuban negotiators to resolve a near breakdown in the International Sugar Agreement of 1931. Cuba made a threat of retaliation credible by using a strategy of brinkmanship. The paper contributes to recent empirical work, such as Levenstein [Explorations in Economic History 33 (1996) 107; Journal of Industrial Economics 45 (2) (1997) 117] and Genesove and Mullin [American Economic Review 91 (3) (2001) 379], which uses the economics of organization to interpret cartel behavior.     

我国足球产业与市场消费的关系分析

我国足球产业包含国家队足球产业、甲级联赛产业、甲A和甲B联赛产业、足协杯赛产业、乙级联赛产业、女子成年足球联赛产业、各级男女青少年联赛产业和其他商业性足球产业等；足球消费增长宏观上主要受我国城市化程度较低、余暇时间不多和足球场地设疆不足三大因素的制约，提高足球消费水平必须提高足球产业产品质量和服务水平，并按足球消费的种类和特点有的放矢地培养忠实的足球消费群体。     

Regulatory fallacies in global telecommunications: the case of international mobile roaming

International mobile roaming cartel agreements prompted the EU to intervene, firstly encompassing competition law measures by a cartel exemption, then initiating several competition proceedings based on the accusation of abuse of a dominant market position, and finally applying price regulations of increasing scope. The paper exposes the temporary market power regulations, including the designated local break out measures, as insufficient and misleading. The solution is to solve the cartel problem at its root, permitting visiting customers the freedom of choosing between their home operator and alternative carriers from the visited country by the implemention of carrier portability.     

What Are SEC Football Tickets Worth? Evidence from Secondary Market Transactions

Tickets to sporting events are highly differentiated—seat location, date and time of the game, and home‐team and opponent qualities make each ticket unique. Preferences also differ nontrivially across fans, all of which make the supplier's pricing problem complex. We examine strategies employed by Southeastern Conference (SEC) universities in pricing their football tickets and evaluate their effectiveness in extracting surplus from fans. We use hedonic analysis of data collected from online secondary market transactions to construct a synthetic season ticket, which we compare to prices actually charged by university athletic departments. We also compare quality premiums charged by universities for better seats with market evaluations of those quality differences.     

An Economic Analysis of Leniency Programs in Antitrust Law

Within a dynamic market environment the forces that drive the effectiveness of leniency programs in antitrust law are analyzed. This effectiveness unambigously is enhanced by (i) increasing the reduction in fine payments in return for reporting a cartel, and (ii) increasing the expected per-period cartel detection probability for any (future) period. Increasing fine payments for violating antitrust law also enhances the programs' effectiveness provided that the reduction in fine payment in return for reporting is large enough. The effectiveness of leniency programs is not influenced by the length of the period of limitation that comes with violating antitrust laws.     

Information reporting and tax compliance: An investigation using individual TCMP data

Empirical studies of tax compliance have typically used data aggregated by audit class to analyze the impact of federal income tax and enforcement structures on the individual's compliance decision. This paper uses micro data from individual tax returns audited during the 1971 cycle of the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Tax Compliance and Measurement Program to reexamine the determinants of tax compliance. IRS data have also consistently revealed marked differences in voluntary reporting rates across different types of income. These differences may be driven by differential information reporting requirements. Hence, separate compliance equations are estimated for income subject to third-party information reporting and for all other income. The results show third-party information reporting to be an effective deterrent to noncompliance, but cast doubt on the presumption that lower marginal tax rates led to greater compliance.     

Financial constraints and foreign direct investment: firm-level evidence

Low productivity is an important barrier to the cross-border expansion of firms. But firms may also need external finance to shoulder the costs of entering foreign markets. We develop a model of multinational firms facing real and financial barriers to foreign direct investment (FDI), and we analyze their impact on the FDI decision. Theoretically, we show that financial constraints can affect highly productive firms more than firms with low productivity because the former are more likely to expand abroad. We provide empirical evidence based on a detailed dataset of German domestic and multinational firms which contains information on parent-level financial constraints as well as on the location the foreign affiliates. We find that financial factors constrain firms’ foreign investment decisions, an effect felt in particular by firms most likely to consider investing abroad. The locational information in our dataset allows exploiting cross-country differences in contract enforcement. Consistent with theory, we find that poor contract enforcement in the host country has a negative impact on FDI decisions.     

Let’s Not Stick Together: Anticipation of Cartel and Merger Control in The Netherlands

Does enforcement action by the Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa) in the case of cartels and mergers produce an anticipatory effect? We use surveys among firms and their advisers to test whether merger plans that may fail to gain clearance from the NMa are not notified and whether the possibility of detection helps to reduce the number of cartels. Our results indicate that enforcement action by the NMa has a preventive effect. Surveys among companies show that 5 % of the notified mergers were modified before notification to forestall possible objections from the NMa. Moreover, for every 100 notifications of mergers there are 13 proposed mergers that are later on abandoned due to merger control. Companies also take account of the Competition Act when drafting contracts, conducting negotiations and holding meetings. Our survey among lawyers and other advisers shows that for every sanction decision taken by the NMa there are almost 5 cases in which, unbeknown to the NMa, a prohibited act has been terminated or modified in response to advice on competition law.