Collusion analysis of the Alabama liquid asphalt market

The Alabama liquid asphalt market in the USA is examined over the period 1961-1978 for evidence of activity consistent with collusion. Some 14 conditional collusion-facilitating factors that could influence a market's tendency towards collusion, not all equally important or necessarily in agreement with every other factor, were considered. While some of these factors are controversial and can help or harm a collusion, the net balance of factors and all of the important factors and evidence pointed towards being consistent with a conspiracy. While not examined as extensively, it was also found that the circumstantial evidence in the market was also consistent with collusion. This article suggests a procedural methodology for initiation and resolution of suspected collusion for determining appropriate damages. While the precise law and damages allowed will be country-specific, the general methodology should have wide application in many countries whose laws attempt to foster and preserve competition and punish and deter monopoly acquired and maintained by acting badly, such as by colluding or exclusionary conduct.

Sraffians, other post-Keynesians, and the controversy over centres of gravitation

International audienceOver the last two decades, a number of Post-Keynesian methodologists have wondered whether the Sraffian school ought to be kept under the Post-Keynesian umbrella, many of them answering that indeed Sraffians ought to be ejected from the Post-Keynesian school if post-Keynesianism were to be methodologically coherent. This has been the position of, among others, Dow (1988), Gerrard (1989), Pratten (1996), Walters and Young (1997) and Dunn (2000, 2008). Stephen Dunn (2000, p. 350) claims that even Sraffians favourable to the project of keeping the Keynesian and Sraffian strands of Post-Keynesianism together have given up, writing that ‘Roncaglia (1995) has called for the abandonment of the project to integrate Sraffian and Post-Keynesian analysis’. Sheila Dow (2001, p. 18) makes an identical attribution, saying that ‘it has even been suggested that attempts to identify the Sraffian approach with Post Keynesianism should be discontinued’, citing the same Roncaglia (1995) paper in support of her claim