Price Fixing Cartel Case Study

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1. Introduction On June 23rd 2010, the European commission published an announcement about a price fixing cartel in the EU bathroom equipment market. The announcement stated that a price fixing cartel had been operating for twelve years in the EU bathroom equipment market. According to the rule of competition, seventeen bathroom equipment manufacturers over six countries were involved, Artweger (AT), Cisal (IT), Dornbracht (DE), Duravit(DE), Duscholux (AT), Grohe (DE), Hansa (DE), Ideal Standard (US), Kludi (DE), Mamoli (IT), Masco (US), RAF (IT), Roca (ES), Sanitec (SU), Teorema (IT), V&B (DE), Zucchetti (IT). These companies received a total amount of 622,250,783 euros in fines for cartel infringements. Due to the fact that Masco was the…show more content…
This form of cartel is called quota cartel. Companies with this type of agreement are able to control the general produce and output amount of products. Firms could reduce market supply in order to raise products price in the market. In technology industry, the new technical limitation cartel is a special type of cartel that is used frequently. New technology can reduce the production cost and increase production efficiency, this is a common knowledge for every producer. Companies within this cartel agreement aim to limit the purchase and development for certain new technology. This typical monopoly agreement is used to eliminate competitors and sabotage the competition environment. Syndicate is a evolved cartel model, which is more stable model for monopoly organizations. Syndicate are usually formed by few big firms, these firms sign a contract for purchasing materials and selling products together via the same channels. This is able to decrease cost…show more content…
Xxxxxx It refers to the price fixing cartel from the case which was able to increase the profitability for the firms within the cartel agreement. In past twelve years, these seventeen undertakings had been agreed to raise their selling price higher than normal market price. Due to the fact that these firms had created a monopoly organization, hence, these companies were no longer price taker anymore. Since then, the undertakings started gaining a extra producer surplus from the higher selling price. At the mean time, consumers had to pay extra money for the same amount of products, this caused a negative influence on consumers surplus immediately. Although these seventeen undertakings were still remained benefiting from the price-raising strategy, the market demand were reduced by the consumers. Moreover, the monopoly activities also sabotaged other competitors’ market share and profit. As one of the firms of the monopoly organization, there occurred no damage on their individual firms level. The firms which are members of the monopoly organization gain extra profits instead of damage. By analyzing the whole bathroom equipment market, the total economic society’s welfare was significantly lower than the perfect competition market with a natural

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