boost prices and reduce consumer welfare. But no merger has been litigated on this basis due to a lack of empirical evidence … firm. First, I find strong and causal evidence that the merger has enabled higher prices for the incumbent. Mergers with … change market concentration, I report a large post-merger increase in the market concentration. To explain it, I introduce …

that would prevent a merger from harming consumers for 1,014 mergers affecting 12,325 antitrust markets scrutinized by the … concerns about the Commission’s merger enforcement being too lax. …

scrutinized by the European Commission between 1995 and 2014. We show that concentration, as measured by the market-specific post-merger … dimension analyzed. Strict past merger enforcement negatively correlates with concentration. Yet, this effect is stronger in the …