We develop a model in which two firms that have proposed to merge are privately informed about merger-specific efficiencies. This enables the firms to influence the merger control procedure by strategically revealing their information to an antitrust authority. Although the information improves...

We analyze evidence production in merger control as a delegation problem under an inquisitorial and an adversarial competition policy system. Agents' incentives to produce evidence depend critically on the action set of the decision maker. In an inquisitorial system, allowing ex ante for a...

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...

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...

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...

We discuss the main Theories of Harm in EU merger control and their evolution since the 1990s. We present stylised facts and trends using data extracted from EU merger decisions by natural language processing tools. EU merger policy has adapted over time, both in terms of legislation and...

This paper introduces the Werden-Froeb Index (WFI) to assist in evaluating merger-specific efficiencies in horizontal mergers. The index measures the weighted average reduction in marginal costs required to restore pre-merger equilibrium prices and quantities after the (full or partial) merger...