Observations of recent mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the semiconductor and computer industry indicate that activities concentrate on the technology leaders in this market. The author examines the influence of players’ heterogeneous product technologies on their involvement in M&A. He...

Exchanges and other trading platforms are often vertically integrated to carry out trading and settlement as one operation. We show that these vertical silos can prevent the full realization of efficincy gains from horizontal consolidation of trading and settlement platforms. Independent of the...

We look at an industry of Cournot oligopolists each of which consists of production facilities which enjoy some degree of freedom in deciding their output quantities and that way influence the total output of a firm. This structure can be motivated e.g. the existence of profit centers or by the...

In this paper, we investigate the pros and cons of using the consumer welfare standard in the competitive assessment of horizontal mergers. The main difference between the total welfare standard and the consumer welfare standard in merger control lies in the treatment of efficiencies. Under the...

We consider the impact of horizontal mergers in the presence of free entry and exit. In contrast to much of the previous literature on horizontal mergers, our model yields predictions that seem intuitively reasonable: with only moderate cost synergies mergers of a small number of industry...

The German potable water supply industry is regarded as being highly fragmented, thus inhibiting high potentials for efficiency improvements through consolidation. Focusing on a hypothetical restructuring of the industry, we apply Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to analyze the potential...

Government policy is more effective when the enforcement regime is transparent, because the economy benefits from the resulting reduction in transactions costs. The Federal Trade Commission has promoted transparency through a number of formal and informal programs. Examples include detailed...