IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlstud/doi10.1086-711392.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Leniency and Damages: Where Is the Conflict?

Author

Listed:
  • Paolo Buccirossi
  • Catarina Marvão
  • Giancarlo Spagnolo

Abstract

Damage actions may reduce leniency programs’ attractiveness for cartel participants if their cooperation with the competition authority increases the chance that the cartel’s victims will sue them. This apparent conflict between public and private antitrust enforcement led to calls for a legal compromise. We show that the conflict is due to the legislation, and a compromise is not required: limiting the victims’ ability to recover their losses is not necessary to preserve the effectiveness of leniency programs and may be counterproductive. We show that damage actions will improve their effectiveness if the civil liability of the immunity recipient is minimized and full access to all evidence collected by the competition authority is granted to claimants. Our results help compare the EU and US damage systems and directly question the 2014 EU directive that tries to protect leniency programs’ effectiveness by restricting access to leniency statements in subsequent damage actions.

Suggested Citation

  • Paolo Buccirossi & Catarina Marvão & Giancarlo Spagnolo, 2020. "Leniency and Damages: Where Is the Conflict?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(2), pages 335-379.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/711392
    DOI: 10.1086/711392
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/711392
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/711392
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/711392?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Catarina Marvão & Giancarlo Spagnolo, 2023. "Leniency Inflation, Cartel Damages, and Criminalization," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 63(2), pages 155-186, September.
    2. Jeroen Hinloopen & Sander Onderstal & Adriaan Soetevent, 2023. "Corporate Leniency Programs for Antitrust: Past, Present, and Future," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 63(2), pages 111-122, September.
    3. Ruben Korsten & Andrew Samuel, 2023. "Cartel formation and detection: the role of information costs and disclosure," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 117-153, August.
    4. Isogai, Shigeki & Shen, Chaohai, 2023. "Multiproduct firm’s reputation and leniency program in multimarket collusion," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    5. Peter T. Dijkstra & Jacob Seifert, 2023. "Cartel Leniency and Settlements: A Joint Perspective," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 63(2), pages 239-273, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/711392. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.