merger between regulated firms when cost synergies are uncertain before the merger and their realization becomes private … information of the merged firm. The optimal merger policy trades off potential cost savings against regulatory distortions from … market induces a more lenient merger policy. The regulated firms' diversification into a competitive segment of the market …

exact amount of cost efficiency/inefficiency that will result from the merger. Nevertheless, the key element of the model is … always have incentives to merge, irrespective of cost uncertainty, while a merger without role redistribution is ex ante … merger between leaders always enhances welfare if participants have incentives to merge, such that private and collective …

assessment of anticompetitive innovation effects in merger review. By focusing on the applied U.S. Antitrust, it turns out that …

We analyze the optimal policy of an antitrust authority towards horizontal mergers when merger proposals are endogenous … seeks to maximize expected consumer surplus involves discriminating between mergers based on a naive computation of the post-merger … Herfindahl index (over and above the apparent effect of the proposed merger on consumer surplus). We show that the antitrust …

to the merger. We show that a PPO reduces the minimal synergy level necessary to make a merger beneficial for consumers …. It follows that an antitrust authority ignoring existing PPOs when evaluating merger proposals (which reflects the … current EU merger control regime) invites sneaky takeovers: Acquiring firms strategically use PPOs prior to a full merger …

We study optimal merger policy in a dynamic model in which the presence of scale economies implies that firms can … the period the merger is proposed. We also find that the abil- ity to commit can lead to a significant welfare improvement …