The literature identifies a significant drop in merger control enforcement activity on both sides of the Atlantic during the last decade. Furthermore, this drop in enforcement activity is convincingly connected to enforcement problems on the sides of the competition agencies. This paper goes...

Standard welfare analysis of horizontal mergers usually refers to two effects: the anticompetitive market power effect reduces welfare by enabling firms to charge prices above marginal costs, whereas the procompetitive efficiency ef-fect increases welfare by reducing the costs of production...