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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...

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 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...

Theoretical research has investigated the relevance of entry-inducing effects as countervailing factor to a merger-related increase in market power. We use route-level data for the America West Airlines - US Airways merger (2005) to investigate whether such an effect can be identified...

We investigate the relationship between public and private enforcers introducing a more differentiated approach. In contrast to the existing literature, we take into account that the costs and benefits of detection and prosecution and, thus, the usefulness of each enforcement mode may change...

A central motivating factor for studying price markups is their effect on consumer welfare. Reported estimates of (firm-level) price markups in the literature, however, are often focused on industry or cross-country comparisons. These treat different industries equally rather than based on how...

The article studies the evolution of the U.S airline industry from 1995 to 2009 using T-100 traffic data and DB1B fare data from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Based on a differentiation in market size and major players, entry and exit, concentration, fares, service, costs and profits,...

We use T-100 traffic data and DB1B fare data from the U.S. Department of Transportation to identify patterns and effects of entry by network carriers and low-cost carriers in non-stop U.S. airline markets. For the sample period from 1996 to 2009, we find that entry activity of low-cost carriers...