We show that the number of merger proposals (frequency-based deterrence) is a more appropriate indicator of underlying changes in merger policy than the relative anti-competitiveness of merger proposals (composition-based deterrence). This has strong implications for the empirical analysis of...

We hand-collect and standardize information describing all 3,055 antitrust lawsuits brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) between 1971 and 2018. Using restricted establishment-level microdata from the U.S. Census, we compare the economic outcomes of a non-tradable industry in states...

We analyze evidence production in merger control as a delegation problem in an inquisitorial competition policy system. The antitrust agency’s incentives to produce evidence on the efficiency of a merger proposal depend critically on its action set. Allowing for a compromising remedy solution...

This paper analyses all final merger decisions by the European Commission from the beginning of 1990 up to the end of 2019. We use a novel dataset, containing information about 6245 merger cases from all economic sectors and combining all sorts of decisions, inclusive of withdrawn and prohibited...

It is with two parts gumption and one part trepidation that we seek to turn the tables on Bill Kovacic in a way that his students might find amusing. In this chapter, we propose to use Bill’s own metrics, laid out in How Does Your Competition Agency Measure Up?, to grade Bill’s contributions...

Do the antitrust law enforcement activities of the US Department of Justice act as exogenous "technology shocks", an essential element of real business cycle theory that hitherto has eluded direct empirical corroboration, or as "markup shocks" limiting market power and promoting economic...

The ultimate objective of the present paper is to empirically investigate the effectiveness of competition policy in developed and developing countries. Although its importance is continuously increasing, the effectiveness of competition policy still seems to lack the attention that it would...

This paper introduces a number of indicators on various aspects of competition laws and competition agencies in order to make competition policies comparable. It contains an indicator concerned with the objectives and the instruments of competition laws, a second indicator evaluating to what...

In this paper we study antitrust intervention in long-term relationships between public procurer and his preferred supplier in one of the Russian regions. We presume that antitrust control of auctions held by affiliated procurer increases the risks of implementing long-term relationships with...