Thresholds defined on the level and change in the HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index) applied to market shares seem to be the main instrument to select notified mergers for investigation in both the EU and US. We question the use of such a selection rule in differentiated products industries. We...

The last couple of years have seen an increasing interest in critical loss analysis, both, in academia and in practice. This development is documented by various research papers, high-level exchanges between antitrust experts as well as an increasing number of case decisions which make use of...

Kann eine Wettbewerbsbeschränkung Effizienzziele verfolgen? Diese Frage beantwortet der Autor mit einem deutlichen "Nein!". Ob eine Wettbewerbsbeschränkung vorliegt, eine marktbeherrschende Stellung missbraucht wird oder der Wettbewerb im Gemeinsamen Markt im Sinne der...

EU Merger Control Regulation No 4064/89 tended to rely on a dominance test, based on the market share of undertakings, to indicate the level and potential changes in market power. The use of such in differentiated product industries is questionable. New EC Merger Regulation No 139/2004...

This paper examines an economy with a large number of industries, each producing a different good. Technological change follows a Poisson process where firms improve their productivity through investment in R&D. The less there are firms in the economy or the more they can coordinate their...

This paper examines an economic union where oligopolistic firms produce by skilled and unskilled labor and do in-house R&D by skilled labor. The planner of the union accepts new members to the union, regulates the labor market through a minimum wage for unskilled labor and supports firms by...

We use a simple framework where firms in two countries serve their respective domestic markets and a world market to analyze under which conditions cost-reducing mergers will be beneficial for the merging firms, the home country, and the world as a whole. For a national merger, the policies...

This paper addresses the reduction of market failure under imperfect competition. It proposes a taxscheme that provides firms with an incentive to forgo their market power: Firms optimize after-tax profits. Now simply consider a firm´s gross profit margin the unique tax-rate it is charged on...