ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of collusive international agreements became widespread in the 1930s. At that time, attempts to control production and prices were still mainly the prerogative of multinational firms operating in the developing world. The “modern era” of cartels began in the 1960s, when the governments of developing nations began to participate in commodity agreements. Although this participation significantly altered the institutional structure of cartels, the underlying goals of cartelization remained as they had always been: to increase and stabilize commodity prices.
