Under ex ante access regulation entrants often claim that access fees are excessive. I show that this is only the case if further entry is admitted. If the entrant is protected from further entry it would agree with the incumbent upon a strictly positive access fee which may exceed the efficient...

The paper develops a four-step framework to detect anticompetitive horizontal mergers. In the first step, an estimate of the impact of the merger on the market price needs to be derived. Subsequent, the second step of the framework has to assess whether such a predicted price increase would be...

The paper aims at assessing the costs and benefits of antitrust enforcement. The analysis starts with an investigation of why competition is typically worth protecting followed by a collection of empirical evidence which shows that competition actually needs protection by antitrust policy in...

Within the last three years, Google has acquired YouTube and DoubleClick and has attempted to control part of Yahoo!'s search advertising business. Two of the deals have not raised antitrust concerns by competition authorities. I review these deals with a focus on consumer welfare. Consumers are...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of the new Council Regulation (EC) 1/2003 which replaces the mandatory notification and authorization system by a legal exception system. Effectiveness is operationalized via the two subcriteria compliance to Art. 81 EC Treaty and the probabilities of...

Bei Verstößen gegen geltendes Wettbewerbsrecht entstehen typischerweise Schäden durch überhöhte Preise und entgangenen Gewinn bei nachgelagerten Wirtschaftsstufen. Hierfür besteht ein gesetzlicher Schadensersatzanspruch. Auf europäischer Ebene wird derzeit ein Rechtsrahmen diskutiert, mit...

The paper assesses the impact of the detection of a hard-core cartel in the Swiss market for road surfacing on post-cartel competition. In addition to an investigation of supply-side factors, demand-side factors, and market prices, the paper also derives estimates of the economic effects of the...

Im Jahre 2005 fand im Rahmen eines OECD Policy Roundtables ein intensiver Meinungsaustausch der Mitgliedsstaaten zu dem Thema 'Evaluation of the Actions and Resources of the Competition Authorities' statt. Eine wesentliche Erkenntnis der Gespräche bestand in der Feststellung, dass...

The paper develops a framework to enforce anti-predation rules that explicitly takes the intervention stage into account. In particular, it is proposed to improve predation enforcement by focusing on two channels: refining the current regime, and amending it. With respect to the refinement of...

The last couple of years have seen an increasing interest in critical loss analysis, both, in academia and in practice. This development is documented by various research papers, high-level exchanges between antitrust experts as well as an increasing number of case decisions which make use of...