In dealing with telecom operator and internet mergers in the late 1990s the European Commission adopted a pessimistic view of competition based on the then emerging theory of network effects. This paper takes a short and critical look at the Commission's use of network effects theory, and its...

The market for project finance loans has a special feature: banks do not only compete individually but also through coalitions or “syndicates”. Traditional concentration indicators summarise industry structure based on individual market shares but they fail to capture the dynamics of...

There appears to be universal agreement that antitrust policy should "protect competition, not competitors" and that consumer welfare is the fundamental standard for evaluating competitive effects. There is considerable debate, however, about how to implement those principles in practice when...

This paper undertakes a statistical analysis of the fines imposed on 168 firms in 22 cartels prosecuted by European Commission under the 2006 Penalty Guidelines, leniency notice, settlement process, and the courts on appeals over the period 2007 to 2010. It looks closely at how the Commission...

European equity trading mainly takes place in electronic order-driven systems. In those systems two groups of traders post their orders. One group makes liquidity by submitting limit orders while the other takes liquidity by submitting market orders. A high degree of liquidity is widely seen as...

We analyse patterns of convergence (divergence) across euro-area countries in manufacturing since monetary union and find that not only costs, but also profitability have followed divergent paths. We further find that profitability developments only partially overlap with those of unit labour...

One of the goals of the European Commission in the energy sector is creating a single competitive European market. The decision of the European Union to liberalise energy markets has far-reaching consequences not only for gas companies, but also for the rest of the real economy in view of the...

This paper presents an analysis of the recent developments of average market power in Europe by using a broad firm-level database for EU member states. To indicate competitive pressure at the firm-level, markups are estimated following De Loecker (2011), and De Loecker and Warzynski (2012). The...

This paper presents an analysis of the recent developments of average market power in Europe by using a broad firm-level database for EU member states. To indicate competitive pressure at the firm-level, markups are estimated following De Loecker (2011), and De Loecker and Warzynski (2012). The...