We estimate the spillovers on firm profitability and market shares in oligopolistic markets through the transition from an n to an n-1 player oligopoly after a merger in the industry. Competitors are identified via the European Commission s market investigations and our methodology allows us to...

This paper deals with the application of the SIEC test in German merger control using the decision by the Bundeskartellamt (German Federal Cartel Office) in the Edeka/ Kaiser’s Tengelmann case (file no. B2-96/14) as an example. The focus is on two aspects which are of particular interest from...

There are very few industries that can attract the attention of Congress, multiple federal and state agencies, consumer groups, economists, antitrust lawyers, the business community, farmers, ranchers, and academics as the agriculture workshops have. Of course, with intense interest from...

The debate on the regulation of minority shareholdings as a type of “structural link” between competing undertakings is not a new one in the sphere of EU competition law. As a matter of policy, the incomplete and rather divisive treatment of minority shareholdings under the current EU merger...

The literature shows that horizontal shareholding engenders significant anticompetitive effects and that no suitable instrument exists within European competition law which reliably and effectively can be applied to curtail such intrinsic effects. This Article analyses several proposals which...

Common ownership fundamentally upsets the well-settled merger enforcement ecosystem. Not only it challenges basic principles informing merger policy such as the presumed profitability of mergers for the merging firms and the merger-specificity of potential efficiencies but also it works against...

Minority shareholdings have been on the regulatory agenda of competition authorities for some time. Recent empirical studies, however, draw attention to a new, thought provoking theory of harm: common ownership by institutional investors holding small, parallel equity positions in several...

We study the effects of competition and interoperabilty in platform markets. To do so, we adopt an approach of competition in net fees, which is well-suited to situations where users pay additional charges, after joining, for on-platform interactions. Compared to other approaches, net fees...

This article analyzes endogenous efficiency gains from mergers. It considers oligopolistic homogeneous good markets and duopolistic and triopolistic markets under product differentiation (PD) (quantity and price competition). In a two-stage game, firms invest in cost-reducing innovation with and...

Digital platforms operate in multisided markets providing services through the internet to two or more distinct groups of users, between which there are indirect network effects. Direct network effects are frequently present within each group. Therefore, online platforms usually present both...