Introduction

Abstract

Improved detection, rising fines, a greater relevance of private damages claims (especially in Europe), and longer prison sentences (for example in USA) have raised the necessity for firms to implement measures that prevent their managers and other employees from violating competition laws (e.g., by engaging in price fixing or the abuse of a dominant position). Competition law compliance programmes have increasingly been implemented by European firms since about the year 2005 while having been in use by, e.g., US-American firms already for a somewhat longer period. Yet, research on this topic is often relatively new and sparse. Such work has mainly been done by legal scholars but increasingly also by researchers in business administration and economics. However, concepts relevant for competition law compliance have been examined by psychologists and political scientists, too. This poses two challenges. First, researchers sometimes work on this topic within the confines of their disciplines without necessarily knowing all the relevant concepts and results established in other fields. Second, practitioners had to implement and design competition law compliance programmes to the best of their knowledge without necessarily getting the scientific advice they may have wished for.