Antitrust holdup source, cross-national institutional variation, and corporate political strategy implications for domestic mergers in a global context

Managers are increasingly uncertain over the source (home-nation or foreign-nation) of antitrust holdup for domestic mergers with significant international implications. I propose a conceptual framework that predicts the source of antitrust holdup for domestic mergers. Under idealized institutional assumptions, I find an industry's global competitiveness to be the primary driver behind holdup source: a contention supported by empirical tests based on the merger policies of 27 antitrust jurisdictions over the 1992-2000 period. I also relax the idealized institutional conditions to yield more precise propositions tailored to the cross-national environment for antitrust policy. Finally, I generate prescriptive propositions that yield implications for effective political strategies.