The effects of the Turkish Competition authority's fines on stock returns of the publicly traded companies listed in Borsa Istanbul

Even though first organized and noteworthy implementation of competition law started with Sherman Act, enacted in 1890, competition law provisions have actually been embedded in trade even before Common Era, when there were logistic constraints for trade and when there was only a handful of products most of which were staple goods, had scaled production and traded commonly such as wheat, barley and corn. Competition laws are fundamental for countries which adopted market economies, as they prevent companies from distorting competition in product and services markets in way that is detrimental to economic efficiency. Therefore, fines of competition authorities are a very crucial tool for the enforcement of competition laws. Only if the fines that companies incur when they infringe competition laws are large enough to be a credible threat, will the companies be deterred from engaging in anti-competitive practices and behavior. In this paper, by using event study techniques and methodology, an empirical analysis have been carried out to explore and assess the effect of Turkish Competition Board's fines on the share prices of 47 companies which have infringed The Act On The Protection Of Competition ("The Act No. 4054") 61 times between 1.1.2002 and 1.9.2013. There are two main novelties of this study. Firstly, this is the first study which estimates the impact of Turkish Competition Board's fines decisions on offending publicly traded companies stock returns. Secondly, this study, for the first time, empirically shows to decision makers publicly traded companies of Istanbul Stock Exchange that other than administrative fines, there are also other important indirect consequences of infringing The Act No. 4054 for the companies such as negative stock returns, bad reputation or loss of key employees. Based on the analysis by using event study techniques and market model, Turkish Competition Board's infringement decisions results in a statistically significant manner cumulative negative average abnormal return of about %1,87 in the 21 days long event window of the study.