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...

On 9 June 2017, the 9th Amendment to the German Competition Act (Gesetz gegen Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen) entered into force. It transposes the EU Directive on Antitrust Damages Actions into German law. Yet, the German legislator also took the opportunity to implement some additional changes....

Die Einführung neuer Endkundentarife für den festen Internetzugang durch die Deutsche Telekom hat die Netzneutralitätsdebatte erneut befeuert. Dabei geht es um die Frage, ob Endkundenanbieter bei der Übertragung von Daten im Internet bestimmte Dienste oder Inhalte gegen ein vom Sender oder...

Nowadays, merger control predominantly relies upon a strict analysis of the effects from merger and acquisitions on effective competition. However, there is scope for so-called public interest considerations in several European merger control regimes and recently a number of European politicians...

Although the pricing dynamics of hardcore cartels have been studied intensively from a theoretical perspective, empirical evidence is still rare. We combine publicly available data with a unique private data set of about 340,000 market transactions from 36 smaller and larger customers of German...

We hypothesize a particular source of cartel instability and explore its relevance to understanding cartel dynamics. The cartel instability is rooted in the observation that, upon cartel formation, the relative positions of firms are often fixed which may lead some growthconscious members to be...

The paper offers an empirical analysis of private antitrust enforcement in Germany based on cases that were decided by courts between 2005 and 2007. The study presents information about the magnitude and nature of civil antitrust actions in Germany. The data includes inter alia, information...

Public enforcement of competition law in Germany is well-established and follows relatively clear rules. Two routes are available: an administrative proceeding that may lead to prohibition decisions and minor remedies, and a quasi-criminal regulatory offence proceeding that also allows for the...

The German Federal Cartel Office and the Austrian Federal Competition Authority have recently published a draft "Guidance on Transaction Value Thresholds for Mandatory Pre-merger Notification (Section 35(1a) GWB and Section 9(4) KartG)" for public consultation. Prof. Dr. Christian Kersting,...