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Incarceration and fines: An empirical study of antitrust sanctions

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Summary and conclusions

With respect to court-imposed sanctions in completed criminal cases brought by the DOJ, the following empirical conclusions are reached for the period 1955–79:

  1. 1.

    Peltzman's hypothesis of the behavior of a vote-maximizing regulator is not relevant to court-imposed antitrust sanctions unless it is reformulated.

  2. 2.

    The extension of Posner's “plausible hypothesis” to sanctions and to another time period is not supported.

  3. 3.

    The APPA of 1974, during the period of this study, had little if any influences on fines and jail sentences; however, it may have had some influence on the proportion of criminal to civil cases.

  4. 4.

    The level of monopolization has no positive influence on sanctions in criminal cases.

  5. 5.

    There is a significant, positive influence of the real resources available to the Antitrust Division on sanctions in criminal antitrust cases. The bureaucratic-political process by whcih the real resources are made available to enforcement agents may be the useful subject for empirical analysis of antitrust enforcement.

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Authors
  1. Joseph C. Gallo
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  2. Jos L. Craycraft
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  3. Shantanu Dutta
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Gallo, J.C., Craycraft, J.L. & Dutta, S. Incarceration and fines: An empirical study of antitrust sanctions. Rev Ind Organ 3, 38–66 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02230837

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