Horizontal mergers are usually under the scrutiny of antitrust authorities due to their potential undesirable effects on prices and consumer surplus. Ex-post evidence, however, suggests that not always these effects take place and even relevant mergers may end up having negligible price effects....

In this paper, we study the optimal number of active firms in acoalition and in a merger. We consider two kinds of game : a merger gameand a coalition game, both in the context of price competition with horizontalproduct differentiation. These are two-stage games. The first stage consistsof...

This article analyzes the incentive to merge in a context of price competition with horizontal product differentiation. In contrast to the results obtained by Kamien and Zang (1990), we show that merged equilibria can appear in this game. Moreover monopolization of the industry occurs with a...

In this paper, we study the impact of a merger on collusion depending on the endowment of capital asset among firms. We show that the merger makes the collusion easier to sustain when asymmetric capital stock combines with less efficient insiders because of more symmetric conditions and closer...

The fight against cartels is a priority for antitrust authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. What differs between the EU and the US is not the basic toolkit for achieving deterrence, but to whom it is targeted. In the EU, pecuniary sanctions against the firm are the only instruments...

Horizontal mergers are usually under the scrutiny of antitrust authorities due to their potential undesirable effects on prices and consumer surplus. Ex-post evidence, however, suggests that not always these effects take place and even relevant mergers may end up having negligible price effects....

The fight against cartels is a priority for antitrust authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. What differs between the EU and the US is not the basic toolkit for achieving deterrence, but to whom it is targeted. In the EU, pecuniary sanctions against the firm are the only instruments...

When multi-product firms make simultaneous price-fixing agreements on different markets, they may wish to compartmentalize their agreements managing them with different individuals in order to avoid the contagion of antitrust authority investigations. Sometimes the leniency programs are...

When multi-product firms make simultaneous price-fixing agreements in different markets, the introduction of leniency programs may induce firms to compartmentalize their activities. Doing so results in slowdown antitrust investigations and decentralized firm can easily request leniency for a...