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相关文献的分析表明，基于经济指标的卡特尔检测方法可以分为自上而下和自下而上的人之间。以自顶向下的方法筛选几个部门确定容易勾结的行业。相反，自底向上的方法集中在一个特定的部门和不依赖一致的跨部门的数据。因此，自底向上的方法可以更加灵活，能够捕捉行业的特殊性，它们的实现需要的数据量大，这可能使获得数据变得昂贵和困难。

As of today, the detection of cartels mainly hinges upon the successful implementation of leniency programmes, which offer cartel members the incentive to blow the whistle and to provide themselves the evidence of cartel existence. In alternative, competent authorities have also the possibility to conduct ex officio investigations, but this require some guidance for the identification of the cases worth investigating about. By using indirect evidence, economic analysis could create a sufficient degree of suspicion to provide an objective justification and a rationale for conducting spontaneous inspections.

An analysis of the relevant literature reveals that approaches for cartel detection based on economic criteria can be distinguished between top down and bottom up ones. Top down approaches screen several sectors in order to identify industries prone to collusion. On the contrary, bottom up approaches focus on a particular sector and do not rely on consistent cross-sector data. While bottom-up approaches can therefore be more flexible and capable of capturing sector specificities, their implementation require big amount of data, which might be costly and difficult to obtain. We are now going to see in details how these methods work and on the basis of some major results obtained by these analytical approaches we will try to draw some conclusions about sectors where collusion may be likely observed.

2.1 Bottom-up approaches

Bottom-up approaches are implemented by conducting an active assessment of markets according to predefined economic criteria, i.e. market screening.

Market screenings refer to the process of identifying industries where the existence of a cartel is highly likely, but they points towards industries that might require further investigation in order to explicitly examine collusion and competition as alternative explanations of market behaviour. Consequently, screening is to be meant just as the first phase of a multi-stage process which may eventually lead to cartel prosecution. A general distinction can be made between structural and behavioural screening methods, which we are going to present in the following sections.

2.1.1 Structural Screening

Structural screening aims at identifying characteristics of an industry that increase the probability that cartels will arise and thrive. Such characteristics are found in markets where theories of collusion predict cartels to be particularly sustainable and where cartels were found in the past.

As a result, industries singled out through a structural approach will display the traits that are expected to be conducive to cartel formation. One could imagine investigating industries that display a number of these relevant traits with the expec本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。