A History of Business Cartels
A History of Business Cartels

Author: Martin Shanahan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-07-05

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1000606163

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International cartels are powerful organizations that impact our everyday lives, although they are little known. This book presents 15 historical case studies of international cartels that include agricultural and mineral commodities, the machinery industry, telephone equipment, whiskey and cement. These cases reveal that international cartels manipulated prices and shared markets over many decades but that their real impact was far wider. The global convergence towards criminalizing serious cartel conduct has seen a revival in historical research on cartels and competition policy. The regulation of anti-competitive behaviour has changed over time. To understand why the US, European and other modern economies altered their policies through the 20th century, it is critical to understand when, how and why governments have interacted with, and been influenced by, business organizations such as cartels. This volume draws together researchers from different nations to examine the impact of international cartels on the experience of individual nations, those nations’ interactions with one or more international cartels, and ultimately the interactions of individual nations with the wider international community. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics and advanced students in the fields of business and economic history, political economy, and government policy, as well as those interested in cartels and their impact on the wider economy.

The Oxford Handbook of Business History
The Oxford Handbook of Business History

Author: Geoffrey Jones

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2008-01-25

Total Pages: 736

ISBN-13: 0191555770

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This Handbook provides a state-of-the-art survey of research in business history. Business historians study the historical evolution of business systems, entrepreneurs and firms, as well as their interaction with their political, economic, and social environment. They address issues of central concern to researchers in management studies and business administration, as well as economics, sociology and political science, and to historians. They employ a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, but all share a belief in the importance of understanding change over time. The Oxford Handbook of Business History has brought together leading scholars to provide a comprehensive, critical, and interdisciplinary examination of business history, organized into four parts: Approaches and Debates; Forms of Business Organization; Functions of Enterprise; and Enterprise and Society. The Handbook shows that business history is a wide-ranging and dynamic area of study, generating compelling empirical data, which has sometimes confirmed and sometimes contested widely-held views in management and the social sciences. The Oxford Handbook of Business History is a key reference work for scholars and advanced students of Business History, and a fascinating resource for social scientists in general.

Regulating Competition
Regulating Competition

Author: Susanna Fellman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-12-12

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780367869571

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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.

Narconomics
Narconomics

Author: Tom Wainwright

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2016-02-23

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1610395840

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Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Tom Wainwright provides a fresh, innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers. More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a blueprint for how to defeat them. How does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the 300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola. And what can government learn to combat this scourge? By analyzing the cartels as companies, law enforcers might better understand how they work -- and stop throwing away 100 billion a year in a futile effort to win the "war" against this global, highly organized business. Your intrepid guide to the most exotic and brutal industry on earth is Tom Wainwright. Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Wainwright provides a fresh, innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers. The cast of characters includes "Bin Laden," the Bolivian coca guide; Old Lin," the Salvadoran gang leader; "Starboy," the millionaire New Zealand pill maker; and a cozy Mexican grandmother who cooks blueberry pancakes while plotting murder. Along with presidents, cops, and teenage hitmen, they explain such matters as the business purpose for head-to-toe tattoos, how gangs decide whether to compete or collude, and why cartels care a surprising amount about corporate social responsibility. More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a blueprint for how to defeat them.

Hub-and-Spoke Cartels
Hub-and-Spoke Cartels

Author: Luke Garrod

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-11-16

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0262046202

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The first comprehensive economic and legal analysis of hub-and-spoke cartels, with detailed case studies. A cartel forms when competitors conspire to limit competition through coordinated actions. Most cartels are composed exclusively of firms that would otherwise be in competition, but in a hub-and-spoke cartel, those competitors (“spokes”) conspire with the assistance of an upstream supplier or a downstream buyer (“hub”). This book provides the first comprehensive economic and legal analysis of hub-and-spoke cartels, explaining their formation and how they operate to create and sustain a collusive environment. Sixteen detailed case studies, including cases brought against toy manufacturer Hasbro and the Apple ebook case, illustrate the economic framework and legal strategies discussed. The authors identify three types of hub-and-spoke cartels: when an upstream firm facilitates downstream firms to coordinate on higher prices; when a downstream intermediary facilitates upstream suppliers to coordinate on higher prices; and when a downstream firm facilitates upstream suppliers to exclude a downstream rival. They devote a chapter to each type, discussing the formation, coordination, enforcement, efficacy, and prosecution of these cartels, and consider general lessons that can be drawn from the case studies. Finally, they present strategies for prosecuting hub-and-spoke collusion. The book is written to be accessible to both economists and lawyers, and is intended for both scholars and practitioners.

The International Aluminium Cartel
The International Aluminium Cartel

Author: Marco Bertilorenzi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-09-16

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 1317804848

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Aluminium was one of most cartelised industries in the international economic panorama of the 20th century. Born following the discovery of electrolytic smelting process in 1886, this industry, even in its infancy, established a cartel which characterised its history until nearly 1980. Managers of the aluminium industry from various historical eras and countries shared the same vision about the development of their industry: to keep prices as stable as possible in order to encourage expansions and to provide return on investments. Price instability, which characterised the trade of other commodities, was unknown to the aluminium industry. This book neither argues that cartels are fundamentally evil, nor attempts to demonstrate that cartels are optimal business organisations. It instead provides an in-depth and frank analysis of the internal working of industrial organisations and of the interplay between cartels and political powers and institutions. The International Aluminium Cartel offers explanations for the construction and collapse of cartels, descriptions of their operations, and an historical interpretation of their experiences. Incorporating information gleaned from a unique collection of private and public archives from several countries, this unique study will appeal to a wide variety of readers, including academics interested in industrial and business history.

The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade
The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade

Author: Benjamin T. Smith

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 1324006560

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A myth-busting, 100-year history of the Mexican drug trade that reveals how an industry founded by farmers and village healers became dominated by cartels and kingpins. The Mexican drug trade has inspired prejudiced narratives of a war between north and south, white and brown; between noble cops and vicious kingpins, corrupt politicians and powerful cartels. In this first comprehensive history of the trade, historian Benjamin T. Smith tells the real story of how and why this one-peaceful industry turned violent. He uncovers its origins and explains how this illicit business essentially built modern Mexico, affecting everything from agriculture to medicine to economics—and the country’s all-important relationship with the United States. Drawing on unprecedented archival research; leaked DEA, Mexican law enforcement, and cartel documents; and dozens of harrowing interviews, Smith tells a thrilling story brimming with vivid characters—from Ignacia “La Nacha” Jasso, “queen pin” of Ciudad Juárez, to Dr. Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, the crusading physician who argued that marijuana was harmless and tried to decriminalize morphine, to Harry Anslinger, the Machiavellian founder of the American Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who drummed up racist drug panics to increase his budget. Smith also profiles everyday agricultural workers, whose stories reveal both the economic benefits and the human cost of the trade. The Dope contains many surprising conclusions about drug use and the failure of drug enforcement, all backed by new research and data. Smith explains the complicated dynamics that drive the current drug war violence, probes the U.S.-backed policies that have inflamed the carnage, and explores corruption on both sides of the border. A dark morality tale about the American hunger for intoxication and the necessities of human survival, The Dope is essential for understanding the violence in the drug war and how decades-old myths shape Mexico in the American imagination today.

How Cartels Endure and how They Fail
How Cartels Endure and how They Fail

Author: Peter Z. Grossman

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2004-01-01

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9781781956373

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Why do some cartels fail and others succeed? This question has intrigued economists for a hundred years, and they have created an extensive body of theory to help explain cartel behaviour. This book looks at the experience of actual cartels and challenges their portrayal as found in the existing literature. The eleven chapters by leading researchers of industrial organization study real examples of industrial collusion. The authors investigate the formation, behaviour, activity and purpose of cartels, and illustrate the intricacies of collusive relationships. In the process they question the existing economic theory surrounding the operation of cartels, which in practice do not always adhere to the textbook models or to complex game theoretic rules. Although much economic research suggests that cartels are doomed to failure, the authors find that there are many examples of industries where cartels have succeeded in controlling prices and output over a prolonged period of time. The book is a groundbreaking attempt to study empirically a range of cartels throughout the world, providing both historical and contemporary examples of collusion to enrich the arguments. This book is written for academics, policymakers, lawyers and economists working in the fields of industrial organization and competition policy.

Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars
Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars

Author: Sylvia Longmire

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2011-10-18

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0230340555

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Having followed Mexico's cartels for years, border security expert Sylvia Longmire takes us deep into the heart of their world to witness a dangerous underground that will do whatever it takes to deliver drugs to a willing audience of American consumers. The cartels have grown increasingly bold in recent years, building submarines to move up the coast of Central America and digging elaborate tunnels that both move drugs north and carry cash and U.S. high-powered assault weapons back to fuel the drug war. Channeling her long experience working on border issues, Longmire brings to life the very real threat of Mexican cartels operating not just along the southwest border, but deep inside every corner of the United States. She also offers real solutions to the critical problems facing Mexico and the United States, including programs to deter youth in Mexico from joining the cartels and changing drug laws on both sides of the border.

Hell's Cartel
Hell's Cartel

Author: Diarmuid Jeffreys

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2010-01-05

Total Pages: 705

ISBN-13: 1466833297

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The remarkable rise and shameful fall of one of the twentieth century's greatest conglomerates At its peak in the 1930s, the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben was one of the most powerful corporations in the world. To this day, companies formerly part of the Farben cartel—the aspirin-maker Bayer, the graphics supplier Agfa, the plastics giant BASF—continue to play key roles in the global market. IG Farben itself, however, is remembered mostly for its infamous connections to the Nazi Party and its complicity in the atrocities of the Holocaust. After the war, Farben's leaders were tried for crimes that included mass murder and exploitation of slave labor. In Hell's Cartel, Diarmuid Jeffreys presents the first comprehensive account of IG Farben's rise and fall, tracing the enterprise from its nineteenth-century origins, when the discovery of synthetic dyes gave rise to a vibrant new industry, through the upheavals of the Great War era, and on to the company's fateful role in World War II. Drawing on extensive research and original interviews, Hell's Cartel sheds new light on the codependence of industry and the Third Reich, and offers a timely warning against the dangerous merger of politics and the pursuit of profit.