Antitrust policy involves not just the regulation of anticompetitive behavior but also an important deterrence effect. Neither scholars nor policy makers have fully researched the deterrence effects of merger policy tools because they have been unable to empirically measure these effects. We consider the ability of different antitrust actions-blocked mergers, negotiated settlements, and monitorings-to deter firms from engaging in mergers. We use cross-jurisdiction/pantime data on merger policy to empirically estimate the impact of antitrust actions on future merger frequencies. We find that blocked mergers lead to decreased merger notifications in subsequent periods and that negotiated settlements weakly increase future merger notifications; in other words, blocked mergers involve a deterrence effect, but negotiated settlements do not. (c) 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..

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This paper tests whether upstream R&D cooperation leads to downstream collusion. We consider an oligopolistic setting where firms enter in research joint ventures (RJVs) to lower production costs or coordinate on collusion in the product market. We show that a sufficient condition for identifying collusive behavior is a decline in the market share of RJV-participating firms, which is also necessary and sufficient for a decrease in consumer welfare. Using information from the US National Cooperation Research Act, we estimate a market share equation correcting for the endogeneity of RJV participation and R&D expenditures. We find robust evidence that large networks between direct competitorscreated through firms being members in several RJVs at the same time -are conducive to collusive outcomes in the product market which reduce consumer welfare. By contrast, RJVs among non-competitors are efficiency enhancing.

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