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 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...

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...

The paper provides new evidence on proxy indicators of market power for major European countries. The data shows moderately increasing average industry concentration over the last two decades, a considerably increasing proportion of high concentration industries, and an overall tendency towards...

We analyze evidence production in merger control as a delegation problem in an inquisitorial competition policy system. The antitrust agency’s incentives to produce evidence on the efficiency of a merger proposal depend critically on its action set. Allowing for a compromising remedy solution...

An increasing body of empirical evidence is documenting trends toward rising concentration, profits, and markups in many industries around the world since the 1980s. Two major criticisms of these studies is that concentration and market shares are poorly measured at the national industry level...

Antidumping creates opportunities for abuse to stifle market competition. Whether cartels actually abuse trade policy for anticompetitive purposes remains an open question in the literature. To address this gap, we construct a novel dataset that matches cartel investigations with trade data at...

We study the evolution of EC merger decisions over the first 25 years of common European merger policy. Using a novel dataset at the level of the relevant antitrust markets and containing all merger cases scrutinized by the Commission over the 1990-2014 period, we evaluate how consistently...

In 2008, the European Commission investigated E.ON, a large and vertically integrated electricity company, for the alleged abuse of a joint dominant position by strategically withholding generation capacity. The case was settled after E.ON agreed to divest 5,000 MW generation capacity as well as...

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...