Market structures, political surroundings, and merger remedies: an empirical investigation of the EC’s decisions

Bougette, Patrice; Turolla, Stéphane

doi:10.1007/s10657-007-9042-6

“…Explanatory variables invariably fall into two broad categories 5 : S, market shares and concentration, and X, other market characteristics, such as entry barriers, buyer power, excess capacity. The current paper attempts to develop this literature in at least three re-4 Other similar studies include: Davies et al (1999) for abuse of dominance in the UK; Carree et al (2008) for European antitrust cases; Grout and Sondregger (2005) for cartels; Lindsay et al (2003) and Bougette and Turolla (2008) for EC mergers.…”

Section: Previous Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Tacit collusion, firm asymmetries and numbers: Evidence from EC merger cases

Davies

¹

,

Olczak

²

,

Coles³

2011

International Journal of Industrial Organization

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This paper estimates the implicit model, especially the roles of size asymmetries and firm numbers, used by the European Commission to identify mergers with coordinated effects. This subset of cases offers an opportunity to shed empirical light on the conditions where a Competition Authority believes tacit collusion is most likely to arise. We find that, for the Commission, tacit collusion is a rare phenomenon, largely confined to markets of two, more or less symmetric, players. This is consistent with recent experimental literature, but contrasts with the facts on 'hard-core' collusion in which firm numbers and asymmetries are often much larger. JEL Classification codes: L13, L41

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“…Explanatory variables invariably fall into two broad categories 5 : S, market shares and concentration, and X, other market characteristics, such as entry barriers, buyer power, excess capacity. The current paper attempts to develop this literature in at least three re-4 Other similar studies include: Davies et al (1999) for abuse of dominance in the UK; Carree et al (2008) for European antitrust cases; Grout and Sondregger (2005) for cartels; Lindsay et al (2003) and Bougette and Turolla (2008) for EC mergers.…”

Section: Previous Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Tacit Collusion, Firm Asymmetries and Numbers: Evidence from EC Merger Cases

Davies

¹

,

Olczak

²

2007

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This paper estimates the implicit model, especially the roles of size asymmetries and firm numbers, used by the European Commission to identify mergers with coordinated effects. This subset of cases offers an opportunity to shed empirical light on the conditions where a Competition Authority believes tacit collusion is most likely to arise. We find that, for the Commission, tacit collusion is a rare phenomenon, largely confined to markets of two, more or less symmetric, players. This is consistent with recent experimental literature, but contrasts with the facts on 'hard-core' collusion in which firm numbers and asymmetries are often much larger. JEL Classification codes: L13, L41

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“…The remedial action chosen by the Federal Trade Commission in the US follows a relatively similar pattern. The empirical literature, as summarized in Table 1 by Bougette and Turolla (2008), has also shown that structural remedies constitute the most frequent type of remedies. This paper investigates structural remedies, with a focus on divestitures of one special form of assets: the divestiture of differentiated brands to an existing competitor.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mergers with Structural Remedies in a Cournot Oligopoly

Guo¹

2020

TEL

0

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In a Cournot oligopolistic market, we investigate the social welfare effects of a one-shot bilateral merger with efficiency gains and structural remedies. The optimal merger policy trades off efficiency gains against market power. We show that a special case of structural remedies, namely, the divestiture of differentiated brands to an existing competitor, can be a powerful tool to lessen the merged entity's market power. As a consequence of the aforementioned trade-off, mergers with remedies can increase the scope for privately and socially desirable mergers, and lower efficiency gains from the merger require more divestitures to the competitor.

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Market structures, political surroundings, and merger remedies: an empirical investigation of the EC’s decisions

Abstract: Merger remedies, Antitrust, European Commission, Discrete choice models, Self-organizing maps, K21, L40, D78,

Cited by 15 publications

References 26 publications

Tacit collusion, firm asymmetries and numbers: Evidence from EC merger cases

Tacit collusion, firm asymmetries and numbers: Evidence from EC merger cases

Tacit Collusion, Firm Asymmetries and Numbers: Evidence from EC Merger Cases

Mergers with Structural Remedies in a Cournot Oligopoly

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