중간재 산업에서 발생한 담합으로 인한 직접구매자의 손해액 추정 -밀가루 담합으로 인한 손해배상 사건을 중심으로-

This paper deals with a cartel case in the wheat flour market of South Korea focusing on the damage caused by the cartel on bakery companies. The judges defined bakery companies’total damage as the increased production cost of bakery companies due to the cartel. The judges did not deduct the amount of cost that bakery companies passed onto its customers. Instead, they reflected such amount in their damage calculation by limiting the wheat companies’liability. The main problem of the court decision on this case is that the damage of bakery companies is, precisely speaking. their reduced profit not the increased cost used by the judges. However, the increased cost of bakery companies after deducting the amount they passed on to their customers come very close to the amount of their reduced profit. Considering the econometric complexity of performing general equilibrium analyses, one could argue that the court reached a reasonable conclusion. However, it would have been ideal if the court defined the bakery companies’damage as the reduced profit and then used the increased cost as a proxy, acknowledging the difficulty of directly measuring the reduced profit.