There is growing worldwide concern about bias in the enforcement of competition law in favour of domestic firms. Even seemingly neutral antitrust laws can lead discrimination if they are enforced selectively. Authors investigate the distortions that national competition authorities generate when...

We model merger control procedures as a process of sequential acquisition of information in which mergers can be cleared after a first phase of investigation. We find that the enforceability of clearance decisions at the end of the first phase is unattractive to the extent that it prevents the...