Interesting Piece in the The Chronicle
An Economist Corners
the Market on Global Cartels
Here is a highlight from the article:
“Shaded under a blue
umbrella at a Cape Cod beach club, a beer in hand and his banana-yellow Porsche
convertible parked nearby, John M. Connor, an emeritus economics professor at
Purdue University, had a confession to make: The cartels have been very good
for him.
It started nearly two
decades ago, with an FBI raid in Illinois that uncovered a global conspiracy to
raise prices on animal-feed supplements. At the time, Mr. Connor had spent his
days probing, say, the efficiency of the U.S. butter market. (It's good, by the
way.) Yet somehow this international cartel had sat in his academic and
geographic backyard, and he had had no idea it was even possible.
"How did I not
know about that?" he said as he read front-page coverage of the scandal at
Archer-Daniels-Midland, the U.S. company that colluded with several Asian
firms. "I used to tell people that I love cartels, but that's
really—that's the wrong word. I became fascinated."”