Since 2010, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM) have acquired more than 400 companies. Competition authorities did not scrutinize most of these transactions and blocked none. This raised concerns that GAFAM acquisitions target potential competitors yet fly under the radar of...

Since 2010, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM) have acquired more than 400 companies. Competition authorities did not scrutinize most of these transactions and blocked none. This raised concerns that GAFAM acquisitions target potential competitors yet fly under the radar of...

Should internet era merger policy differ from industrial era merger policy? Platform ecosystems rely on economies of scale, data-driven economies of scope, high-quality algorithmic systems, and strong network effects that frequently promote winner-take-most markets. Their market dominance has...

Do established firms buy new businesses to take out future competition? Recent works in economics literature use “killer acquisitions” as a graphic concept to describe these transactions. How concerned should competition policy be? The answer to this question hinges on how much the...

The applicability of the notion of killer acquisition to digital platforms has long been debated. The case of the proceedings brought by the U.S. DoJ against Visa is even more interesting insofar as it makes it possible to illustrate and discuss its different facets ranging from the notion of...

We study effects on prices and quantities of a takeover in the rather concentrated German interurban bus industry. We empirically asses the effect of the takeover of Postbus by Flixbus on industry key features, using a route-level price data set containing prices for more than 6,000 routes in...

Standard analysis of mergers in oligopolies along the lines of the popular Farrell-Shapiro Framework (FSF) relies, regarding its policy conclusions, on the assumption that rational agents will only propose privately profitable mergers. If this assumption were held, a positive external effect of...

We study effects on prices and quantities of a takeover in the rather concentrated German interurban bus industry. We empirically asses the effect of the takeover of Postbus by Flixbus on industry key features, using a route-level price data set containing prices for more than 6,000 routes in...

Standard analysis of mergers in oligopolies along the lines of the popular Farrell-Shapiro-Framework (FSF) relies regarding its policy conclusions sensitively on the assumption that rational agents will only propose privately profitable mergers. If this assumption held, a positive external...

We analyze the effects of structural remedies on merger activity in a Cournot oligopoly when the antitrust agency applies a consumer surplus standard. Remedies increase the scope for profitable and acceptable mergers, while divestitures to an entrant firm are most effective in this regard....