Research On Legal Regulation Of International Hard Core Cartel

International hard core cartel is an anticompetitive agreement, anticompetitive concerted practice, or anticompetitive agreement by competitors to fix prices, establish output restrictions, or share or divide markets. With the globalization of economy, more and more companies have the ability to form international hard core cartels, doing great harm to the effectiveness of world market and challenging the implement of WTO rules and multilateral negotiation outcomes. Research on International hard core cartel has become one of the key issues of Competition Law in many jurisdictions.Based on the global effort against international hard core cartel of some developed countries such as the U.S. and some international organizations, this paper aims toprovide some useful advice on legal regulation on international hard core cartel. In section I, this paper gives a theory analysis of international hard core cartel, includingdefinition, features, conditions of formation and maintenance, and reasons of regulation. To be successful in detecting, investigating and prosecuting cartels, competition agencies have to rely on instruments and skills which are not commonplace in other anti-trust work, so in section II, basic measures of some countries and international organizations have been introduced, including antitrust compliance programs, enforcement techniques, amnesty program and sanction regimes. In section III, based on analysis of two typical hard core cartel cases, international enforcement cooperations have been discussed, especially focusing on amnesty program cooperation and information sharing. At the end of this paper, rugulation of international hard core cartel in the framework of WTO is proposed. Given the nature of WTO agreements, reaching a consensus might be considerably more challenging, realizing these difficulties, some feasible rules are brought forward.