We study the welfare effects of a merger between ad-funded platforms facing elastic consumer demand. We show that advertising fees as well as quality investment levels by the platforms fall post-merger. Interestingly, despite the lower advertising fees, advertisers may be worse off when their...

This comprehensive review of ex-post merger studies assesses the price effects of horizontal transactions to determine whether there are common post-merger price effects, both overall and in specific markets. The aim is to derive implications for policy makers and competition authorities in...