We find that stricter merger control legislation increases abnormal announcement returns of targets in bank mergers by 7 percentage points. Analyzing potential explanations for this result, we document an increase in the pre-merger profitability of targets, a decrease in the size of acquirers...

In this comprehensive review of ex-post merger studies price effects of horizontal transactions are evaluated. By combining and further analyzing the results of 52 retrospective studies on 82 mergers or merger-like transactions it can be shown that the industry alone is no strong indication for...

We analyze evidence production in merger control as a delegation problem in an inquisitorial competition policy system. The antitrust agency’s incentives to produce evidence on the efficiency of a merger proposal depend critically on its action set. Allowing for a compromising remedy solution...

The ministerial proposal for a 10th amendment of the German competition law particularly addresses abuse control and seeks to tighten this pillar of competition policy against the background of the challenges from the digital economy. Next to extending the classic policy instruments of abuse...

Market concentration often leads to unnecessarily high prices and reduced innovation. European merger control positively affects competition and productivity, though not yet perfectly effectively. In times of increased market concentration, merger control needs to be enforced even more...

In this paper, we comment on the debate about guidelines for Art. 102 TFEU in the face of the challenges brought by digital ecosystems and abuse of dominance in related markets. We take the perspective of dynamic competition economics and derive four recommendations for the future enforcement of...

Naturally, competition policy is based on competition economics made applicable in terms of law and its enforcement. Within the different branches of competition economics, modern industrial economics, or more precisely gametheoretic oligopoly theory, has become the dominating paradigm both in...

Advances in competition economics as well as in computational and empirical methods have offered the scope for the employment of merger simulation models in merger control procedures during the past almost 15 years. Merger simulation is, nevertheless, still a very young and innovative instrument...

Advances in competition economics as well as in computational and empirical methods have offered the scope for the employment of merger simulation models in merger control procedures during the past almost 15 years. Merger simulation is, nevertheless, still a very young and innovative instrument...