Cartels: Economic efficiency of sanctions

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. Presentation At a time when the Commission is publishing new guidelines on the calculation of fines in antitrust matters, it seems appropriate to question the purpose and effectiveness of the penalties imposed on undertakings that have infringed the competition rules, particularly in the case considered to be the most serious and unjustifiable: cartel practices. Since the pioneering work of Gary Becker (1968), economists have developed an extensive literature on "optimal sanctions". Schematically, sanctions - whatever their legal nature and form - should aim not only at punishing detected cartels (ex-post effectiveness) but also and above all at