Kartellverfahren gegen russische Erdölfirmen in den Jahren 2008-2010

Die Änderungen des Wettbewerbsrechts in Russland haben dazu geführt, dass es als Instrument zur Preisregulierung auf dem Markt für Erdölprodukte eingesetzt werden kann. In den letzten drei Jahren hat die russische Kartellbehörde deshalb eine Vielzahl von Verfahren gegen die größten Erdölfirmen des Landes eingeleitet. Die Weiterentwicklung des Wettbewerbsrecht bedeutet so einen nachhaltigen Wandel der Position der großen Erdölfirmen auf dem russischen Binnenmarkt

Franchising As Hybrid Organization: Russian Skill

Russia has favorable conditions for development of hybrid cooperation (franchising) on the different markets. On the one hand, as well as for the majority of countries with transition economies many Russian markets has been undersaturated. On the other hand, as for the developed countries, Russia has highly skilled human resources and the developed structure of consumption. In these conditions a model of coordination of the relations of franchising has been more and more popular. The benefit of this form can be explained from the side of institutional approach. The matter is that in real practice to determine the borders of firm is not simple. Key decisions of firm sometimes can be performed not in one center that can complicate distribution of control and responsibility and the determination of its borders. On the other hand, the determination of key decisions in the market, distribution of its assets and responsibility within one firm can strongly increase agency expenses. Therefore the hybrid form of coordination of the relations (to which the franchising belongs) can lower these expenses, but in case of strict accomplishment of terms of the contract. The hybrid forms of coordination includes the combination of characteristics of the market and hierarchy. Transactions are controlled via the price mechanism for coordination. For control and management of united actions, the maintenance of a certain symmetry in relations are necessary the hierarchical elements. The different conditions of franchise are the reasons of risks for both parties. And for decrease in risk of opportunism the special tools are developed for disciplining of the franchisee. The described examples of the Russian franchises through comparison of contract terms showed how hybrid agreements solve the cooperation problems connected with specificity of resources, transactional expenses and the competition

Enterprises Monitoring for Crisis Preventing Based on Knowledge Engineering

Part 5: Standardization and Knowledge Management/DevelopmentsInternational audienceDecision support system (DSS) for enterprises monitoring on the base of knowledge engineering is considered. The technologies of expert systems and data mining are used for DSS. The developed system assumes continuous monitoring of the enterprises indicators and consists of three modules. The expert systems technology forms the basis of the two modules of the DSS – the first module is to classify enterprises depending on the level of crisis states risk, and the second one is to identify the signs of a false crisis states (fraudulent bankruptcy) on the base of forecasted indicators. The data mining module is to forecast the financial indicators of the enterprise. The decision maker using the DSS may be the top manager or supervisory authority. It is possible for users of the system to monitor the major trends in the economic processes of the enterprise. This approach has been used on the example of state monitoring of number of industrial and agro-industrial enterprises of Republic Bashkortostan. The practical application of the DSS prototype, allowing realizing approach suggested, is considered

Cartels and Leniency: Taking Stock of What We Learnt

Cartels remain widespread and constitute a major problem for society. Leniency policies reduce or cancel the sanctions for the first firm(s) that self-report being part of a cartel and have become the main enforcement instrument used by competition authorities around the world in their fight against cartels. Such policies have shown to be a powerful tool in inducing firms to self-report or cooperate with a cartel investigation in exchange for a reduction in sanctions. Since they reduce sanctions for successful leniency applicants, these programs may also be abused to generate many successful convictions for the competition authority at the expense of reduced cartel deterrence and social welfare. Hence, it is vital for competition authorities and society to understand how leniency programs affect firms' incentives, in order to optimize their design and administration. A rich theoretical, empirical and experimental economic literature developed in the last two decades to meet the challenge. In this chapter, we review some of the key studies which have been undertaken to date, with emphasis on more recent contributions and without claiming to be exhaustive (we apologize in advance to the authors of papers we could not discuss), highlighting and comparing the main results, and setting out their limitations. We conclude with a general assessment and an agenda for future research on this topic at the core of competition policy