We develop a theory of innovation for entry and sale into oligopoly, and show that an invention of higher quality is more likely to be sold (or licensed) to an incumbent due to strategic product market effects on the sales price. Preemptive acquisitions by incumbents are shown to stimulate the...

An increasingly large share of cross-border acquisitions are undertaken by private equity-firms (PE-firms) and not by traditional multinational enterprises (MNEs). We propose a model of cross-border acquisitions in which MNEs and PE-firms compete over domestic assets. MNEs' advantage lies in...

In their merger control, EU and the US have considered symmetric size distribution (cost structure) of firms to be a factor potentially leading to collusion. We show that forbidding mergers leading to symmetric market structures can induce mergers leading to asymmetric market structures with...

Many convicted cartels have a leader which is substantially larger than its rivals. In a setting where firms face indivisible costs of collusion, we show that: (i) firms may have an incentive to merge so as to create asymmetric market structures since this enables the merged firm to cover the...