• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.11-21
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• 2024

In the steel industry, there is a perception that "collusion has become a long-standing practice" and it is expected that the authorities' legal response to collusion will be strengthened in the future. This necessarily requires improving the accuracy of the legal response, the most important of which is to accurately identify whether the allegedly colluding firms actually did collude. This study focuses on the recent iron scrap price-fixing case and examines whether a single accused firm actually engaged in price-fixing in a situation where there is a mix of firms that acted independently of the collusion and firms that actually engaged in price-fixing. The results of the analysis allow us to infer that the accused steelmaker did not actually collude, which is consistent with the authorities' final judgment against the steelmaker. In the real world, some collusions are carried out by only a subset of firms in a market, and in these cases, there are often disputed firms as to whether or not they carried out the collusion. This study can serve as an analytic guide for industries, including the steel industry, to verify the behavior of individual firms, especially those whose collusive practices are disputed.