ABSTRACT

Cartels, trusts and agreements to reduce competition between firms have existed for centuries, but became particularly prevalent toward the end of the 19th century. In the mid-20th century governments began to use so called ‘cartel registers’ to monitor and regulate their behaviour. This book provides cases studies from more than a dozen countries to examine the emergence, application and eventual decline of this form of regulation.

Beginning with a comparison of the attitudes to regulation that led to monitoring, rather than prohibiting cartels, this book examines the international studies on cartels undertaken by the League of Nations before World War II. This is followed by a series of studies on the context of the registers, including the international context of the European Union, and the importance of lobby groups in shaping regulatory outcomes, using Finland as an example. Section two provides a broad international comparison of several countries’ registers, with individual studies on Norway, Australia, Japan, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. After examining the impact of registration on business behaviour in the insurance industry, this book concludes with an overview of the lessons to be learnt from 20th century efforts to regulate competition.

With a foreword by Harm Schroter, this book outlines the rise and fall of a system that allowed nations to tailor their approach to regulating competition to their individual circumstances whilst also responding to the pressures of globalisation that emerged after the Second World War. This book is suitable for those who are interested in and study economic history, international economics and business history.

Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at https://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. 

chapter |13 pages

Introduction

Regulating competition – the rise and fall of ‘cartel registers’ in the twentieth-century world

part |96 pages

Context of cartel registers

chapter |13 pages

Publish or be damned?

Early cartel legislation in USA, Germany and Norway, 1890–1940

chapter |18 pages

Legitimising Cartels

The joint roles of the League of Nations and of the International Chamber of Commerce

chapter |18 pages

Competition policy in the European Economic Community, 1957–1992

The curse of compulsory registration?

chapter |22 pages

How the tortoise became a hare

On the initial sclerosis and ultimate modernisation of Dutch competition policy

chapter |23 pages

Creating the 1957 cartel law

The role of pressure groups on Finland’s competition policy and cartel registration

part |157 pages

Registers in different countries

chapter |19 pages

Transparency of cartels and cartel registers

A regulatory innovation from Norway?

chapter |22 pages

Policy transfer and its limits

Authorised cartels in twentieth-century Japan

chapter |21 pages

The Dutch cartel collection in the twentieth century

Facts and figures

chapter |20 pages

Regulating competition of the Swedish insurance business

The role of the insurance cartel registry

part |7 pages

Conclusion

chapter |5 pages

Conclusion