Public and Private Sanctions: The case of cartels

Public and Private Sanctions: The case of cartels

Mariuzzo F, Ormosi P, Karatzas A & Zherou M

In this article, we revive an old debate in the law and economics literature: the relative role of public and reputational sanctions in deterring misconduct. We propose an empirical framework, which accounts for public sanctions and a more direct measure of reputational sanctions, harnessing recent developments in opinion mining. We use the intensity and the sentiment of media exposure of misconduct as a measure of reputational effect and thus approximation of the reputational sanction. As a demonstration, we combine an event study approach, sentiment analysis, and econometric techniques on a sample of 339 listed cartel member firms, prosecuted by the European Commission between 1992 and 2015. Our results offer evidence that in the context of cartels, public and reputational sanctions act as substitutes.

CITATION: Mariuzzo, F, Ormosi, P, Karatzas, A, & Majied, Z (2018) "Public and Private Sanctions: The case of cartels"