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...

This paper looks at whether the standard unilateral effects model can be applied to non-price competition parameters such as innovation. This question arises because competition authorities are intervening in horizontal mergers that are found to give rise to a “significant impediment to...

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...

The importance of economics to the analysis and enforcement of competition policy and law has increased tremendously in the developed market economies in the past forty years. In younger and developing market economies, competition law itself has a history of twenty to twenty-five years at most...

This paper provides a comparative analysis of methods for the empirical ex post evaluation of merger control decisions. It develops a competition-policy oriented framework of assessment criteria for the leading evaluation methods and applies them to structural modeling and simulation,...

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...

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 – in the United...

Critical observers state that current antitrust policies fall short of addressing the wider societal implications of a market economy, inter alia in merger control. The interests of employees in decent wages, merger impacts on the environment, or the pursuit of a governmental industrial policy...

In its judgment of May 28, 2020, CK Telecoms UK Investments Ltd v. Commission, the EU General Court (GC) has made several fundamental observations on the construal of the SIEC-test with regard to horizontal mergers. The GC embraces a more economic approach, while tightening the standard of...

The 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines (Guidelines) advance the use of the Gross Upward Pricing Pressure Index (GUPPI) for analyzing unilateral effects of mergers in differentiated-products industries. However, the Guidelines do not quantify a GUPPI safe harbor threshold, whereas the Guidelines...