We consider two (symmetric) upstream firms producing independent goods that sell to consumers through symmetric retailers. The distinguishing feature of retailers is that they have a selling capacity, in the sense, that there is an upper limit in the total units of the two goods they can sell....

The US Merger Guidelines consider that the anticompetitive effect of a horizontal merger is increasing in the initial market concentration and decreasing in the elasticity of demand. These ideas are studied in a setting where identical firms compete à la Cournot and marginal cost is constant....

Using only information on the degree of concavity of demand and observable structural variables as the market share of firms, a necessary and sufficient condition for a merger to increase welfare is derived. On the profitability side, we obtain that when market size decreases merger...

A monopolist retailer facing two suppliers producing two symmetric and independent goods improves its bargaining position by commiting to sell only one good. We analyze if this advantage extends to the case where there are two undierentiated retailers competing in the same market. With linear...

In a setting where symmetric firms compete a la Cournot and costs are linear, the degree of concavity is identified as the main determinant of merger profitability. This allows to generalize the results in Salant et al (1983) and Cheung (1992).