Methods to spot Collusion
The article above shows some different methods that anti-trust economists are now adopting in order to identify cartels. The main bulk of the article is based on the Benford Law which states that in a large number of populations the leading number is not uniformly correlated as one may expect. Instead the number 1 is much more likely to be a leading number than the number 9. This can be seen from the graph below which shows the probability that the leading number will be the given constant.
Anti-trust agencies can use this law to spot whether a firm is creating dubious numbers. [...]