The Impact of Leniency Program on Cartels' Deterrence In Russia

Cartel is a serious economic crime. Antimonopoly authorities of countries are making efforts to expose cartels and prevent the formation of new ones. The achievement of antimonopoly regulation is the development of a leniency program. It grants amnesty to the first participant of the collusion, who informed the antimonopoly authorities about his participation in the anti-competitive agreement. However, there is still no single opinion about effectiveness of the program. The study tested hypothesis about the impact of leniency program on the detection and characteristics of cartels in Russia based on the collected database of the disclosed cartels in 2007-2018. The results of the paper showed that the leniency program increases the participants' incentives to deviate from collusion, making the agreements less stable.