Global Price Fixing: Our Customers are the EnemySome books get written, others write themselves. This book is the latter type. I have devoted myselfto studying the economic organization of industries related to food and agriculture for almost twenty-five years. It has been my good fortune to work at places that tolerated my gadfly approach to research. So long as I produced a few publications each year and wooed a few graduate students to share those interests, I was free to pursue an array of topics: why firms diversifY, the competitive role of advertising, strategies for selling in overseas markets, measuring market power, and many others. Although firmly anchored in the eclectic analytical framework of industrial economics and focused on the food system, I traversed a wide field at will. Some years ago, I had pretty much convinced myself that naked price fixing was not a high priority for scholarship in these industries. True, collusion was rife in a few food industries, such as bid-rigging among suppliers of fluid milk to school districts in isolated rural districts. Ripping off milk money from school children is reprehensible enough, but the size of the economic losses from localized price fixing paled besides other sources of imperfect competition. |
Contents
The Electrical Equipment Conspiracy | 43 |
The Citric Acid Industry | 99 |
The Citric Acid Conspiracy | 131 |
Economic Impacts of the Citric Acid Cartel | 147 |
The World Lysine Industry | 161 |
The Lysine Conspiracy | 199 |
Economic Effects of the Lysine Cartel 241 | 240 |
The Global Vitamins Industry | 277 |
U S Government Prosecution of the Cartels 339 | 338 |
Antitrust Prosecutions by Foreign Governments | 399 |
The Chicago Criminal Trial | 411 |
The Civil Suits 447 | 446 |
More Global Cartels | 483 |
The Business of Fighting Cartels | 503 |
Summing Up | 521 |
569 | |
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Common terms and phrases
ADM's Ajinomoto antitrust laws Archer Daniels Midland Asian attorneys average BASF Bayer began behavior capacity Cargill Cargill's cartel members Chapter Cheil chemical citric acid citric acid cartel civil collusive companies company's competition Connor conspiracy conspirators cooperation corn corporate costs court criminal damages defendants Degussa direct buyers DOJ's Dwayne Andreas early economic effects enforcement estimates European evidence federal class fines global cartels global sales guilty pleas Hoffmann-La Roche indicted industry investigation Japan Japanese Jungbunzlauer Kyowa Hakko largest late list prices lysine cartel lysine prices managers manufacturers Mark Whitacre market shares meetings Michael Andreas million pounds monopoly overcharge percent Pfizer plaintiffs pleaded guilty price fixers price fixing production profits prosecution prosecutors Rhône-Poulenc sellers settlement Sewon sodium gluconate suits Table tapes Terrance Wilson trade transaction prices trial U.S. exports U.S. market U.S. sales United violations vitamin B3 vitamin cartel vitamin E volume Whitacre's