The Study On Leniency Program Under Anti-Monopoly Law

The healthy development of the market economy relies on the legitimate operation of market main bodies adhering to the market competition order. As rational economic men, proprietors always driven by maximizing profit, adopt anti-competitive behavior and disrupt the normal order of market competition, in order to obtain the high monopoly profit. As a kind of widespread monopoly behavior disrupting the market competition order, cartel has always been penalized by legislation in many countries around the world. But with the high-speed development of modern market economy, cartel’s behavior and existing form are becoming more complicated and invisible, which causes the anti-monopoly enforcement agencies detect cartel more and more difficult. The leniency program under anti-monopoly law created by the United States of America in1978, has improved the efficiency of enforcement agencies and played an important role in discovering and penalizing cartel, by giving the leniency program applicants actively cooperating enforcement agencies different levels of legal liabilities reduction, to encourage cartel participants to surrender to enforcement agencies. Then, many countries and regions in the world also draft the leniency program on to their own system of the anti-monopoly law and improve it constantly. The leniency program, drafted for the first time on to the anti-monopoly law of china, because it is too principled and general, has not operated very well after revised for several times. Therefore, this thesis, based on the current situation and problems of the leniency program of China, by referring to the advanced experience of other countries, puts forward some suggestions for the leniency program of China.According to the structure of "introduction to the topic, program overview, current problems, experience reference, measures of improvement", this thesis is divided into five parts for the study of the leniency program.The first part is "Introduction" that introduces the background, research status at home and abroad, and research methods of this topic to make sure that readers understand the research purpose and ideas of this thesis. The second part is "An Overview of the Leniency Program",firstly, introduces the connotation and features of the leniency program; secondly, analyzes the theoretical basis of the creation and operation of the leniency program, from principle of law, moral theory and economics.The third part is "the Current Situation and Problems of the Leniency Program of China", firstly, introduces the current situation of the leniency program in China since the anti-monopoly law was issued in2008; secondly, analyzes reasons why the leniency program can not operates very well in China from the deficiency of the enforcement environment and specific applicable conditions.The fourth part is "the Current Situation and Experience of the Leniency Program of other countries", briefly discusses the legislative process and current situation of the America, European Union and other countries, then summarizes the successful experience which could be referred by China.The fifth part is "the Suggestion and Measures for Improvement of the Leniency Program of China", which is also the most important part, firstly, suggests that the system of the legal liability of the leniency program under the anti-monopoly law should be created and improved from criminal, administrative and civil liabilities; secondly, suggests that the system of enforcement of the leniency program under the anti-monopoly law should be created and improved; thirdly, suggests that specific applicable conditions of the leniency program under the anti-monopoly law should be improved from the subject scope, time, evidence, behavior, measures of safeguard for applicants of the leniency program.