The use of traditional industry-level profitability indicators for assessing the state of competition is problematic … for two reasons. First, short-term variation reflects business cycles more than it does the impact of competition policy …. Second, rough industry-level indicators hide different mechanisms that are dependent on competition but may affect …

Markets with imperfect competition do not induce a cost-minimizing allocation of production between firms. The market …'s ability to rationalize production is even more limited if costs are private information to firms. Merger in such markets …

larger price increases than mergerrelated exits. Within the merger category, our analysis reveals significant price increases … on all affected routes immediately after the exit events. In the medium and long-run, however, realized merger …

have a positive influence on the profitability of firms. This study examines the effect of product diversification on the … profitability of 25 German food industry sectors from 1977 to 1994. The analysis reveals a positive effect of diversification on the … profitability of industries. …

if they are not. We present empirical evidence on effects of perceived threat of entry on profitability. Using … profitability is confirmed. The number and the relative size of competitors also exert considerable effects. We find no …

We consider a setting in which two potential merger partners each possess private information pertaining both to the … profitability of the merged entity and to stand-alone profits, and we investigate the extent to which this private information makes … ex-post regret an unavoidable phenomenon in merger negotiations. To this end, we consider ex-post incentive compatible …

's stand-alone value and a component of the synergies that would be realized by the merger involving his firm. We characterize …, hence transfers can be made contingent on the new information accruing after the merger. Second, we study the case of … identify necessary and sufficient conditions for the implementability of efficient merger rules. In the second case, we show …