This article examines the collusive potential of first refusal contracts, which are contracts that grant one party, the buyer, a right of first refusal on the output of another party, the seller. When two parties enter into this type of contract, the seller is obligated to offer any output she...

Based on a database of 326 merger cases scrutinized by the European Commission between 1990 and 2007, we evaluate the economic impact of the change in European merger legislation in 2004. We first propose a general framework to assess merger policy effectiveness, which is based on standard...

The duration of merger proceedings held by competition authorities is an important determinant of the efficiency of the entire merger control process. We use a dataset of 2953 Phase I and 92 Phase II investigations completed by the European Commission (EC) between 1999 and 2008 to examine the...

Under the regime of Regulation 1/2003 on the implementation of the rules of competition laid down in Articles 101 and 102 TFEU undertakings are obliged to take care by themselves of their compliance with the competition rules. For practical purposes this is also true when it comes to the rules...

We analyze the effects of synergies from horizontal mergers in a Cournot oligopoly where principals provide their agents with incentives to cut marginal costs prior to choosing output. We stress that synergies come at a cost which possibly leads to a countervailing incentive effect: The merged...

This paper applies a novel methodology to a unique dataset of large concentrations during the period 1990-2002 to assess merger control's effectiveness. By using data gathered from several sources and employing different evaluation techniques, we analyze the economic effects of the European...