This study shows an overview about investigations in the field of mergers and acquisitions of agribusiness companies (milk and sugar) and examines the trade off effect between efficiency gains on business level and dangers for competition policy. The study underlines relevant results of mergers...

Mergers realize heterogeneous competitive effects on profits, production, and prices. To date, it is unclear whether differential merger outcomes are caused mostly by firms' technology or product market attributes. Furthermore, empirical merger studies conventionally assume that, conditional on...

Recently there has been a notable increase in interest in antitrust law in much of the world. This chapter discusses antitrust policy toward horizontal mergers, the area of antitrust that has seen some of the most dramatic improvements in both economic tools and the application of economics in...

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...

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...