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 …

acquirer firm to learn the merger synergies with the target firm in advance. The realization of a synergy is uncertain ex ante …'s takeover strategy and the decision problem of the antitrust authority. We derive implications for a merger control approach to … initial minority share, becomes an insider, and learns the merger synergy. We show how this feature of PPOs affects a firm …

This is a survey of the economic principles that underlie antitrust law and how those principles relate to competition … central features of antitrust policy. Our objective is to foster the improvement of legal regimes and also to identify topics …

order to reduce her agency costs. Whenever this incentive effect dominates the well-known direct synergy effect, synergies …We analyze the effects of synergies from horizontal mergers in a Cournot oligopoly where principals provide their … agents with incentives to cut marginal costs prior to choosing output. We stress that synergies come at a cost which possibly …

pricing pressure, and the vertical arithmetic. In addition, for each tool, its use in a recent U.S. merger case is illustrated …: for critical loss analysis, the Novelis/Aleris merger; for upward pricing pressure, the GE/Electrolux merger; and for the …

Recently there has been a notable increase in interest in antitrust law in much of the world. This chapter discusses … antitrust policy toward horizontal mergers, the area of antitrust that has seen some of the most dramatic improvements in both …, merger laws and enforcement practices, econometric methods for analyzing prospective horizontal mergers, and evidence …

use a novel database that identifies over 20,000 product/geographic antitrust markets affected by over 2,000 mergers … 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 …