The experimental literature on antitrust enforcement provides robust evidence that communication plays an important role for the formation and stability of cartels. We extend these studies through a design that distinguishes between innocuous communication and communication about a cartel, sanctioning only the latter. To this aim, we introduce a participant in the role of the competition authority, who is properly incentivized to judge the communication content and price setting behavior of the firms. Using this novel design, we revisit the question whether a leniency rule successfully destabilizes cartels. In contrast to existing experimental studies, we find that a leniency rule does not affect cartelization. We discuss potential explanations for this contrasting result.

关于反托拉斯执法的实验文献提供了有力的证据，表明沟通在卡特尔的形成和稳定中起着重要作用。我们通过一种设计来扩展这些研究，该设计区分无害的通讯和关于卡特尔的通讯，仅批准后者。为此，我们介绍了竞争管理机构的角色，通过适当激励他们来判断企业的沟通内容和定价行为。使用这种新颖的设计，我们重新审视了宽大处理规则是否成功破坏了卡特尔的稳定的问题。与现有的实验研究相反，我们发现宽大处理规则不会影响卡特尔化。我们讨论了这种对比结果的潜在解释。