Cartel regulation in New Zealand: Undermining the per se rule?

Abstract

In 2010, the New Zealand Government began a process to reform and strengthen the regulation of cartels, with a focus on criminalising hard core cartels. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has condemned hard cartels as the "most egregious violations of competition law" and recommended criminal sanctions. ¹ The New Zealand Court of Appeal has said that "[c]artel conduct has a damaging impact upon society: it results in high prices, misallocation of resources, and corrodes the incentive for firms to innovate." ²