We assess the consequences for consumers in 76 countries of multinational acquisitions in beer and spirits. Outcomes depend on how changes in ownership affect markups versus efficiency. We find that owner fixed effects contribute very little to the performance of brands. On average, foreign...

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 effect increases welfare by reducing the costs of production...

The purpose of this paper is to represent in which way a stable and no negligible growth in demand can affect the level of sustainability of collusion. For the European Commission this assumption is seen as a factor that disincentives collusion and pushes to a competitive behavior. This fact...

This paper uses an endogenous merger formation approach in a concentrated international oligopoly to examine the effects of trade liberalization on the nature of merger incentives (national vs. international). The effects of unilateral trade liberalization on a country's industry structure are...

This paper develops a two-country, general equilibrium model of oligopoly in which the degree of horizontal product differentiation is endogenously determined by firms strategic investments in product innovation. Consumers seek variety and product innovation is more skill intensive than...

Infl ows of foreign knowledge are the key for developing countries to catch up with the world technology frontier. In this paper, I construct a simple tractable model to analyze (a) the incentives of foreign fi rms to bring their know-how to a developing country and (b) the incentives of...

We survey some of the literature on the effects of improved market transparency on competition in ologopoly. Generally, improved transparency from the perspective of irms makes detection of deviations from tacitly collusive agreements easier, thus facilitating oligopolistic coordination. On the...

Our trust in competition policy is based on faith in markets. When markets are oligopolies, already classical economists’ trust in competition busted: Oligopolies carry the seeds of collusion. To develop, collusion needs trust between firms. But new leniency programmes are designed to bust...

The pre-insulated pipe cartel was established 1990 in Denmark, was extended to Italy and Germany during 1991 and re-organised in 1994 to cover the entire common market. Cartel members engaged in market sharing, price setting, bid rigging, coordinated predation and delaying of innovation. The...

We examine the effects of reorganizing electricity markets on ca- pacity investments, retail prices and welfare when demand is uncer- tain. We study the following market configurations: (i) integrated monopoly, (ii) integrated duopoly with wholesale trade, and (iii) sep- arated duopoly with...