This paper tests whether the transition from the old Economic Competition Act, which was based on the so-called “abuse system”, to the new Competition Act, which was based on “prohibition system”, in the Netherlands had an impact on the price-cost margins in manufacturing industries...

It is well established that an incumbent firm may use exclusivity contracts so as to monopolize an industry or deter entry. Such an anticompetitive practice could be tolerated if it were associated with sufficiently large efficiency gains, e.g. insuring buyers against price volatility. In this...

Theoretical IO models of horizontal mergers and acquisitions make the critical assumption of efficiency gains.Without efficiency gains, these models predict either that mergers are not profitable or that mergers are welfare reducing.A problem here is the empirical observation that on average...

Many commodities are traded on both a spot market and a derivative market. We show that an incumbent producer may use financial derivatives to extract rent from a potential entrant. The incumbent can indeed sell insurance to a large buyer to commit himself to compete aggressively in the spot...

We model merger control procedures as a process of sequential acquisition of information and compare US and EU procedures. In the US, the authorities do not have to justify their decision to require further information (issue a second request), whereas in the EU, the authorities face a di_erent...

International mobile roaming cartel agreements prompted the EU to intervene, firstly encompassing competition law measures by a cartel exemption, then initiating several competition proceedings based on the accusation of abuse of a dominant market position, and finally applying price regulations...

This paper tests whether upstream R&D cooperation leads to downstream collusion. We consider an oligopolistic setting where firms enter in research joint ventures (RJVs) to lower production costs or coordinate on collusion in the product market. We show that a sufficient condition for...

We propose a general framework to assess merger policy effectiveness based on standard oligopoly theory and stock market reactions. We focus on four different dimensions of effectiveness: 1) legal certainty, 2) decision errors, 3) reversion of anti-competitive rents, and 4) deterrence. We apply...

Roughly during the last decade, European Competition Policy has undergone a series of fundamental changes. All four areas - cartel policy, merger policy, abuse control, and state aid control - have been subject to a modernization process, which led to a focus on analysing the effects of...

We investigate the relationship between public and private enforcers introducing a more differentiated approach. In contrast to the existing literature, we take into account that the costs and benefits of detection and prosecution and, thus, the usefulness of each enforcement mode may change...