Mergers with Structural Remedies in a Cournot Oligopoly

Abstract

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.