In this paper we analyse the current trend towards a higher degree of market integration in Europe and identify those aspects that are particularly relevant for Italy. The Italian involvement in this process appears comparatively modest: contributions from policy makers, practitioners and...

We set up a sequential merger game to study a firm's incentives to pass up on an opportunity to merge with another firm. We find that such incentives may exist when there are efficiency gains from a merger, firms are of different sizes, there is an antitrust authority present to approve mergers,...

We introduce a new class of quot;increasing elasticity of substitutionquot; (IES) preferences to model product differentiation. In a monopolistic competition setting a la Dixit - Stiglitz (1977) we find that, even under constant returns to scale and complete information, a rise in the number of...

Merger policy is a permission-granting activity by government in which there may be disincentives to seek permission because of the benefit from having other firms merge. We set up a sequential merger game with endogenized antitrust policy to study one aspect of these disincentives. In...