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 …

Merger value is frequently evaluated in single market contexts without considering possible gains stemming from firms … multimarket firms create incremental value. We establish a simple theoretical model that determines merger value in a multimarket … firm environment. The model enables us to derive merger values as being independent of post-merger market shares, but …

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 …