METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH DETERMINING THE HIDDEN PRICE COLLUSION
The article analyzes the theoretical and methodological aspects associated with the relevance of developing special tools aimed at identifying the alleged hidden price collusion using publicly available financial and extra-financial information. Participants in the alleged conspiracy are considered as a group of relatively separate set of economic entities that coordinate their actions through mechanisms of interaction and mutual influence in order to reduce the pressure of system factors and obtain the corresponding economic effect. The necessity of creating a methodological approach that allows, based on financial statements, identifying the alleged hidden price collusion within a specific OKVED activity, is substantiated. The approach is based on the analysis of the correlation dependence of a number of significant indicators of financial and economic activity and the presence of affiliated companies that are likely to participate in the hidden price collusion. The results of testing the methodological approach using the example of crude and oil companies and construction companies are presented. Based on the results of testing, it was concluded that the proposed tool for identifying the alleged hidden price collusion is effective and can be used by state regulatory authorities in the field of antimonopoly regulation of Russia.
Keywords: price collusion, price agreements, antitrust regulation, correlation, affiliation, probit-regression analysis.
Highlights:
an analysis of the existing tools for assessing the alleged hidden price collusion within the framework of the economic approach revealed the fact that most developed methods have one common significant drawback: their use is possible only with access to internal, insider information;
a methodological approach was developed to assess the alleged hidden price collusion using external information, which makes it possible to use this toolkit to a wide range of users;
the proposed tools were tested using the example of “Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production” and “Construction” companies to build probit-regression models in order to determine the alleged hidden price collusion of a particular organization;
the developed tools for identifying the alleged hidden price collusion can be used by state regulatory authorities in the field of antitrust regulation of Russia.
Pavel N. Likhutin, Candidate of Economics, Associate Professor of the Department of Corporate Governance and Finance; Dmitry V. Skobelkin, employee of the Department of Corporate Governance and Finance. E-mail: cutkin2011@yandex.ru; Denis A. Khoroshman, employee of the Department of Corporate Governance and Finance - Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management.