An increasingly large share of cross-border acquisitions are undertaken by private equity-firms (PE-firms) and not by traditional multinational enterprises (MNEs). We propose a model of cross-border acquisitions in which MNEs and PE-firms compete over domestic assets. MNEs' advantage lies in...

Over the past two decades, private equity has contributed to a shrinking of the U.S. stock market. We develop a political economy model of private equity activity to study the wider economic consequences of this trend. We show that private and social incentives to delist firms from the stock...

We extend the literature on exclusive dealing, which assumes that entry can occur only by installing new capacity, by allowing the incumbent and the potential entrant to merge. This uncovers new effects. First, exclusive deals can be used to improve the incumbent's bargaining position in the...

We show that, in the case when innovations are for sale, increased product market competition, captured by reduced product market profits, can increase the incentives for innovations. The reason is that the incentive to innovate depends on the acquisition price which, in turn, might increase...

We provide facts showing that in service markets: (i) restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) are under reform, (ii) cross-border Mergers & Acquisitions dominate as the entry mode of FDI, and (iii) there is often a high market concentration. Based on these facts, we present a model for...

We provide a model that explains the following empirical observations: i) private ownership is more efficient than public ownership, ii) privatizations are associated with increases in efficiency and iii) the increase in efficiency predates the privatization. The two key mechanisms explaining...

In their merger control, EU and the US have considered symmetric size distribution (cost structure) of firms to be a factor potentially leading to collusion. We show that forbidding mergers leading to symmetric market structures can induce mergers leading to asymmetric market structures with...

Investment liberalizing countries are often concerned that cross-border mergers & acquisitions, in contrast to greenfield investments, might have an adverse effect on domestic firms and consumers. However, given that domestic assets are sufficiently scarce, we identify a preemption effect and an...

We find that reduced foreign corporate taxes may lead to inefficient foreign acquisitions if complementarities between foreign and domestic assets are low, and to efficient foreign acquisitions if such complementarities are high. Moreover, with large complementarities, foreign acquisitions can...