The dataset records firms that were involved in EU-wide cartels and were discovered by the European Commission between 1985-2009. Data were compiled from public sources such as the European Commission's cartel database and include the date of cartel detection. Reliable estimates of crime detection rates could help design better sanctions and improve our understanding of the efficiency of law enforcement. For cartels, insufficient knowledge on the rate of discovery has hindered effective enforcement in the past. The ESRC Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) undertakes interdisciplinary research into competition policy and regulation that has real-world policy relevance without compromising academic rigour. It prides itself on the interdisciplinary nature of the research and the members are drawn from a range of disciplines, including economics, law, business and political science. The Centre was established in September 2004, building on the pre-existing Centre for Competition and Regulation (CCR), with a grant from the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council). It currently boasts a total of 26 faculty members (including the Director and a Political Science Mentor), 4 full- and part-time researchers and 23 PhD students.

Importing data from public documents. For the purposes of data collection the case reports from the European Commission's cartel database are used. The first capture in the sample was in 1984, and the last one in 2005, in which time period 110 cases with 492 cartelising firms were detected. Only illegal cartels were included in the sample, therefore estimates can only be interpreted for the (sub)population of illegal cartels. The data contains 685 offences, including 94 recidivist firms, and 194 recidivist offences.