Cartels in Public Procurement: A Reassessment

Bidding markets differ from all others because the objective of a cartel is not simply to raise prices, but also to ensure that each colluding firm gains some benefit. As a result, in most bid rigging cartels colluders rotate as adjudicators. The resulting bidding strategies give rise to anomalies in biddings that could be detected by the bid organizers. This is very important because leniency programs are unlikely to be very effective: dismantling a cartel is very seldom beneficial for the poss