Abstract

This article addresses optimal deterrence and its limits in the context of creating a more effective mechanism for antitrust compliance to take hold in businesses. We suggest the need for the creation of proactive encouragement of compliance programmes. Antitrust authorities should work with the business community to create a regulatory scheme that rewards good behaviour while punishing bad behaviour. To do so, antitrust authorities need to understand how to create and sustain compliance efforts within a company. The proper role of an antitrust compliance programme should be to ensure compliance with the law and to promote ethical behaviour by and between companies as part of good corporate governance. Antitrust authorities should play a role in encouraging and supporting this in the same way other enforcement authorities do (eg in relation to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act/anti-bribery enforcement). We argue that from a policy perspective, antitrust enforcement should not just be about punishment but about changing normative values within organizations.

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