We set up a sequential merger game to study a firm's incentives to pass up on an opportunity to merge with another firm. We find that such incentives may exist when there are efficiency gains from a merger, firms are of different sizes, there is an antitrust authority present to approve mergers,...

Merger policy is a permission-granting activity by government in which there may be disincentives to seek permission because of the benefit from having other firms merge. We set up a sequential merger game with endogenized antitrust policy to study one aspect of these disincentives. In...

Current EU law states that the competition authorities, in dealing with a merger proposal, cannot commit to specific remedies when rejecting proposals and essentially have to resort to accept or reject remedies proposed to it. We show that giving the authorities the power to propose, and commit...