카르텔 억지 및 피해자의 효과적 구제를 위한 독점규제법의 사적 집행 방안

There is little doubt that cartels must be prohibited and deterred by strong public enforcement of competition law. Because cartels can hardly be detected, however, it is difficult to deter cartel by the government. Even when big cartels are detected by the government, because of large amounts of litigation cost and attorney’s fee, it is not easy for cartel victims to bring damage suits before courts. Considering these situations, this article argues that it is higly needed to introduced the legal system for private enforcement of Korean competition law for cartel deterrence and compensation from the perspective of law and economics. Since firms pursue to maximize their profits, when the expected benefits of cartel outweigh the expected costs, they would have a strong incentive to collude to fix price. In order to deter cartels, it is needed to raise the expected costs of cartel by strengthening public enforcement. But just because cartel detection rate is too low, public enforcement can not properly raise the expected costs. This article proved that private enforcement can be used as an effective tool to raise the expected costs of cartels in Korea. In order to deter widespread cartels in most industries, the expected costs of cartel damage litigation by private plaintiffs should be decreased by introducing class action. In addition, it is needed to increase the expected benefits of litigation by recognizing multiple damages compensation.