We show how temporary ownership by private equity firms affects industry structure, competition and welfare. Temporary ownership leads to strong investment incentives because equilibrium resale prices are determined by buyers incentives to block rivals from obtaining assets. These incentives...

As a part of their industry or competition policies governments decide whether to allow for free market entry of firms or to regulate market access. We analyze a model where governments (ab)use these policy decisions for strategic reasons in an international setting. Multiple equilibria of this...

This paper investigates the effects on tacit collusion of increased market transparency on the consumer side of a market in a differentiated Hotelling duopoly. Increasing market transparency increases the benefits to a firm from underbutting the collusive price. It also decreases the punishment...

Many cartels are formed by individual managers of different firms, but not by firms as collectives. However, most of the literature in industrial economics neglects individuals' incentives to form cartels. Although oligopoly experiments reveal important insights on individuals acting as firms,...

We examine the profitability of cross-ownership in an oligopolistic industry where firms compete as Cournot rivals. We consider a symmetric cross-ownership structure in which a subset of k firms engage in cross-shareholding and each firm has an equal silent financial interest in the other firms,...

We propose an analysis of platform competition based on the academic literature with a view towards competition policy. First, we discuss to which extent competition can emerge in digital markets and show which forms it can take. In particular, we underline the role of dynamics, but also of...

Over the period 2015-2017, the five giant technologically leading firms, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft (GAFAM) acquired 175 companies, from small start-ups to billion dollar deals. By investigating this intense M&A, this paper ambitions a better understanding of the Big Five's...

Tracking online user behavior is essential for targeted advertising and is at the heart of the business model of major online platforms. We analyze tracker-specific web browsing data to show how the prediction quality of consumer profiles varies with data size and scope. We find decreasing...

This paper analyzes international antitrust enforcement when multinational firms operate in several markets with antitrust authorities in each market. We are concerned with how the sustainability of collusion in one local market is affected by the existence of collusion in other markets when...