Partial Price-Fixing and Semi-Collusion

Many cartels do not directly fix the price of products. Instead, the participants may agree on a starting price for negotiations or the price of a component of the overall price. Antitrust investigations reveal that cartel agreements are also often very imperfectly implemented. Antitrust law in the United States and the European Union has typically taken a robust approach to these practices even where economic analysis might be unable to show that such practices always or almost always harm consumer welfare. The decision of the New Zealand Supreme Court in Lodge Real Estate Ltd. v. Commerce Commission offers a New Zealand perspective on the concept of a price-fixing agreement and imperfect collusion. The Court, this article argues, reached the correct decision in Lodge. The decision, however, evidences a pragmatic judgment, rather than the confident deployment of economic learning or foreign case law within the statutory framework of the Commerce Act 1986. The language of sections 30 and 30A of the Act was borrowed from an Australian statute, which in turn had attempted to capture the state of United States price-fixing law in the 1970s. A more formalistic and pre-Chicago approach to antitrust is evident in the language, much of which was inspired by United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. The case also highlights some of the distinctive features of the competition law in New Zealand. The reluctance to develop to guide in the application of the general provisions of the Commerce Act and requiring a demonstration of an effect on price on the facts may mark a departure from the body of pricing case law in the United States and the European Union and risks undermining the per se prohibition of cartel conduct in the Commerce Act. Without the same depth and breadth of cartel case law, the adoption of a more flexible approach to anticompetitive agreements evident in some decisions in the United States and the European Union could have different effects in a smaller jurisdiction.