Research

abstract: This paper examines how considering corporate cartels as a network activity helps explain both

their stability and recidivism. We use a dataset of 1,300 cartels prosecuted between 1990 and 2018,

and we estimate cartel stability using several graph-theoretic indicators. The interconnection and

number of multiple offenders contribute to the cartel stability. First, we find that increasing the

average firms’ number of connections by 10% is associated with a decrease in cartel duration of 4.1

months. Second, a 10 percentage points increase of the share of multiple offenders, used as a measure

of cartel interconnection, is associated with an increase in cartel duration of almost 10.5 months.

These results suggest that accounting for the network dimension of interconnected cartels can provide

valuable insights into the stability and recidivism of corporate collusions.