A Simple Quantitative Methodology for the Setting of “Optimal Fines” by Antitrust and Regulatory Authorities

"The theoretical literature on optimal fines has developed enormously over the last thirty or so years and we now understand better than ever all the main factors that affect the size of optimal fines. Further, these developments have had a significant impact on the approach that competition and regulatory authorities (CAs and RAs, for short) use when involved in fine-setting in recent years.

However, there is still a gap in linking theoretical developments to practical fine-setting in the sense that there is no quantitative methodology to guide Authorities about how the various factors that economic theory recognises as important and other issues related to mainly legal considerations can be brought together and quantified within a coherent methodological framework that would allow them to generate fine estimates under a variety of different circumstances.

The main rationale of this article is to try to fill this gap by developing such a practical quantitative methodological framework that is based mainly on economic theory but also takes into account a multitude of diversely motivated considerations that all major CAs and RAs take into account when setting fines. In relation to the latter, we mainly rely on the practices followed by the US and the EU (DG Comp) authorities, as well as those of the OFT, as reviewed by Bageri et al in 2013."