THE PROBABILITY OF A CLEAR PRICE CONTRACT UNDER THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT: A METHODICAL ASPECT
Theoretical and methodological provisions and applied aspects of identifying implicit price collusion in the market are considered. It is necessary to assess the increased probability of implicit price collusion under uncertainty of information flows, where the implicit price collusion, considered as a group, presupposes the presence of a relatively isolated set of economic actors coordinating their actions through the interaction for reducing the pressure of system factors and obtain the corre-sponding economic effect. A methodical approach has been developed to identify implicit price col-lusion by calculating the index of the increased probability of implicit price collusion based on the analysis of publicly available financial and extra-financial information. The approach is based on the analysis of the correlation dependence of a number of significant indicators of financial and eco-nomic activity and the presence of affiliated relations of companies prone to probable participation in implicit price collusion. The results of the methodological approach are presented on the example of the “sugar production” type of activity, in which the Federal Antimonopoly Service proved price collusion. It can be concluded that the proposed toolkit to identify the probability of implicit price collusion is effective and can be used in practice.
Keywords: price collusion, price agreements, methodical approach, anti-monopoly regulation, correlation of financial and economic indicators, sugar production, extra-financial information.
Highlights:
the necessity of evaluating the indicator “increased probability of implicit price collusion”, where price collusion is viewed as a group of relatively separate economic entities coordinating their actions to reduce the pressure of system factors and obtain the corresponding economic effect, was justified;
tools for identifying implicit price collusion, based on the analysis of publicly available fi-nancial and extra-financial information were proposed;
the approbation of the developed tools was carried out using the example of the activity “sugar production”, in which the Federal Antimonopoly Service proved a price agreement.
Pavel N. Likhutin, Candidate of Economics, Associate Professor; Anastasia Eu. Kaverina, a student. Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management.