"Cartels in the building industry – how many and where? - Tracing the European cartels in Swedish archives and in the investigations made by the European Commission"

The aim of the paper is to investigate the number and scope of cartels in the building industry in Europe during the 20th century. There will be two different methods used to trace the cartels; the archive of building material companies located in Sweden and the cases that the European Commission has investigated. The Swedish companies were often active in forming cartels during the 20th century and by using their archives we can determine what kind of cartels that were set up and how they worked. The European Commission has since 1964 published their investigations and several of the investigations concern the building industry those will contribute with information about scope and function of the cartels.
The paper is part of the project Understanding international cartels in the 20th century: tracing size and scope. Preliminary insights from the project suggest collaborations existed in many industries and could take a multitude of organizational forms. Their geographical range also shows significant variation. It is frequently assumed that international cartels expanded from regional collaborations to international and transnational collaborations. Some, however, were engaged in regional cross-national collaborations that never expanded, while other international entities, were nearly “born global”, and dominated over a long period. There is a wide spectrum of types, the reasons for which we know very little.