Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
西班牙汽车制造商卡特尔反垄断损害赔偿的因果证据
Causal evidence of antitrust damages in the car manufacturers’ cartel in Spain
摘要
This paper estimates the causal impact on vehicle prices of an automobile manufacturers’ cartel that operated in Spain from 2006 to 2013. To do so, we construct a novel dataset containing manufacturers’ recommended retail prices for Spain and several unaffected European Union countries over the period 2000–2011. Exploiting variation in the timing of cartel entry across brands, we apply a difference-in-differences approach controlling for sales volume, scrappage schemes, and fixed effects. Our estimates show that the cartel increased prices in Spain by approximately 9.3% on average during the infringement period. Robustness checks confirm the consistency of the findings: the parallel trends assumption holds, results remain stable with alternative control groups, and placebo tests yield no significant effects. These findings contribute to the limited empirical literature on causal estimation of cartel overcharges and provide policy-relevant insights on the transmission of upstream collusion to final consumer prices.
中文摘要
本文估计了2006年至2013年间在西班牙运营的一个汽车制造商卡特尔对车辆价格的因果影响。为此，我们构建了一个新颖的数据集，包含2000年至2011年间西班牙及多个未受影响的欧盟国家的制造商建议零售价。利用各品牌加入卡特尔的时间差异，我们采用双重差分法，并控制销量、报废补贴计划及固定效应。估计结果显示，在侵权期间，该卡特尔使西班牙的汽车价格平均上涨约9.3%。稳健性检验证实了研究结果的一致性：平行趋势假设成立，使用替代对照组时结果保持稳定，安慰剂检验未产生显著效应。这些发现为关于卡特尔超额收费因果估计的有限实证文献做出了贡献，并为上游合谋向最终消费者价格传导提供了政策相关的见解。