Anti Trust Law and Cartel

Anti trust laws and cartels.

Competition in economics is rivalry in supplying or acquiring an economic service or good. Sellers compete with other sellers, and buyers with other buyers. In its perfect form, there is competition among many small buyers and sellers, none of whom is too large to affect the market as a whole; in practice, competition is often reduced by a great variety of limitations, including monopolies. The monopoly, a limit on competition, is an example of market failure. Competition among merchants in foreign trade was common in ancient times, and it has been a characteristic of mercantile and industrial expansion since the middle Ages. Economic theorists had come to regard competition as a natural outgrowth of the operation of supply and demand within a free market economy. The price of an item was seen as ultimately fixed by the confluence of these two forces. Early capitalist economists argued that supply-and-demand pricing worked better without any regulation or control. Their model of perfect competition was marked by absolute freedom of trade, widespread knowledge of market conditions, easy access of buyers to sellers, and the absence of all action restraining trade by agencies of the state. Under such conditions no single buyer or seller could materially affect the market price of an item.

U.S antitrust laws has been successfully applied to anti-competitive behavior which takes place abroad but have an effect in the United states. Most common anti-competitive behavior that has been a clamor is price fixing. Price fixing usually arise by group of independent producer, whose goal is to fix prices, limit supply, and to limit competition. These groups are referred to as cartel. Cartel is prohibited by antitrust laws, in most countries; however they continue to exist nationally and internationally. The most notable cartel in the world is OPEC. OPEC Cartel which is an intergovernmental organization, which aims to influence and maintain price of oil through the control of production levels to generate revenue, which goes towards meeting the developmental needs of its member. Although OPEC does not regard its activities as either been anticompetitive or illegal there has been preposition for the cartel to be prosecuted under U.S anti trust laws. The Question is can the united state prosecute OPEC? OPEC whose mission which is to coordinate & unify the petroleum policies of Member Countries &