CIBE - University of Michigan

A three-year grant from CIBE has provided much-needed support for our research project, "Globalization and Competition." This collaborative effort with Professor Margaret Levenstein focuses on both international cartels and export cartels. We study both the economic effects of these cartels and the international-policy issues they create. We believe that a more comprehensive approach to promoting competition in global markets than currently exists is necessary to address emerging issues in the international marketplace.

CIBE has given us funding for travel to collect critical data from cartel-trial transcripts and to attend conferences. We also have relied heavily on a team of research assistants from the Ross School of Business, as well as the Law School and the economics department.

To date we have assembled a very rich data set on all international cartels convicted by the United States or the European Union of conspiring to divide markets or set prices from 1990 through 2004. We also have completed data collection for a separate data set on all U.S. export trading associations that have received exemptions from antitrust law for their export activity, and we have linked those associations to the relevant trade flows and industry variables.

Our analysis of these data sets has provided the basis for several papers that have been published or accepted for publication during the past year. These include a chapter in the book How Cartels Endure and How They Fall (2004, Peter Grossman, ed.) and an article in the Antitrust Law Journal, titled "International Price-Fixing Cartels and Developing Countries: Discussion of Effects and Policy Remedies" (2004). As the only scholarly research that directly examines the impact of contemporary (private) international cartels on developing countries, our research paper has received considerable attention in international-policy circles.

Recently, our article "The Changing International Status of Export Cartel Exemptions" (forthcoming in 2005) was accepted by the American University International Law Review. With support from CIBE, we are continuing to work on material for our book International Cartels in Global Markets. We could not have done all this without support from CIBE, in combination with support from the Dean's office.

Valerie Y. Suslow - Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy, Ross School of Business

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