The recent Impala Judgment by the CFI on the Sony/BMG Decision by the Commission represents the most important ruling on collective dominance since Airtours. We review both the Decision and the Judgment and derive implications for the institutional and substantive development of EU Merger...

Both in the US and in Europe, antitrust authorities prohibit merger not only if the merged entity, in and of itself, is no longer sufficiently controlled by competition. The authorities also intervene if, post merger, the market structure has changed such that "tacit collusion" or "coordinated...

While price-fixing cartel prosecutions have received significant attention, the policy determinants and the political preferences that guide such antitrust prosecutions remain understudied. We empirically examine the intertemporal shifts in U.S. antitrust cartel prosecutions during the period...

We analyze the effects of structural remedies on merger activity in a Cournot oligopoly when the Antitrust Agency (AA) cannot observe a proposed merger's efficiency type. Provided the AA follows a consumer surplus standard, an efficient merger type is doomed to over-fix with its divestiture...

We demonstrate that the popular Farrell-Shapiro-framework (FSF) for the analysis of mergers in oligopolies relies regarding its policy conclusions sensitively on the assumption that rational agents will only propose privately profitable mergers. If this assumption held, a positive external...

Antitrust authorities all over the world are concerned if a particularly aggressive competitor, a maverick, is bought out of the market. One plausible determinant of acting as a maverick is behavioral: the maverick derives utility from acting competitively. We test this conjecture in the lab. In...

We analyze the effects of structural remedies on merger activity in a Cournot oligopoly when the antitrust agency applies a consumer surplus standard. Remedies increase the scope for profitable and acceptable mergers, while divestitures to an entrant firm are most effective in this regard....

This paper provides a theoretic model for the analysis of cartel formation in an industry that is subject to profit shocks. The competitive or collusive conduct of a firm is determined by a decision maker who maximizes the present value of utility that accrues to him by earning a share of the...

This paper evaluates the welfare consequences of the failing firm doctrine in the EU and US merger laws. I combine an oligopoly model with an 'endogenous valuations' auction model. Thereby, I take into account that, in an oligopoly, a firm's willingness to pay for the assets depends on the...

This paper empirically investigates the advertising competition in the French broadcast television industry within a two-sided market framework. We use a unique dataset on the French broadcast television market including audience, prices, and quantities of advertising of twenty-one TV channels...