there is uncertainty about the marginal costs of the newly merged firms. The authors consider that the merging firms decide … always have incentives to merge, irrespective of cost uncertainty, while a merger without role redistribution is ex ante … profitable if and only if uncertainty is sufficiently great. As regards the social desirability of mergers, it is found that a …

prices versus tradable quantities in terms of expected welfare, given uncertainty, optimal policy and endogenous cost …