This article provides a model of two risk-neutral firms that may cooperate to achieve a goal that is potentially illegal. The model assumes enforcement risk and firms that are imperfectly informed about antitrust law enforcement. It is shown that compliance training, which educates the agents...

The share of stocks beneficially owned by institutional investors has increased substantially over the last three decades. Together with a high and increasing level of concentration in the asset management industry, this trend implies that a small number of institutional investors now constitute...

Severe limitations on antitrust enforcement officials’ knowledge and the potential impact of ill-advised investigations and prosecutions on markets suggest that officials should exercise extraordinary caution in enforcement of restraints on single-firm conduct. Although it is common to depict...

Severe limitations on antitrust enforcement officials' knowledge and the potential impact of ill-advised investigations and prosecutions on markets suggest that officials should exercise extraordinary caution in enforcement of restraints on single-firm conduct. Although it is common to depict...

Estimating antitrust risk is fundamental to identifying, proposing, and pricing deals. A more informed understanding of what to expect when meeting with agency staff and leadership will help antitrust lawyers and economists (or other consultants) anticipate the critical questions and potential...

This study examines whether antitrust risk affects firms’ disclosure of mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Due to regulatory exemptions, deals that fall below a size threshold escape formal antitrust scrutiny at the time of the merger. These “non-reported” deals can have important...

We examine empirically the impact of ex ante competitive threats from potential foreign rivals on bad news hoarding/disclosure decisions. We find that stronger antitrust enforcement around the world causes domestic U.S. firms to exhibit lower levels of stock price crash risk. This is consistent...

This essay is the introduction to a forthcoming volume entitled, Regulating Innovation: Competition Policy and Patent Law Under Uncertainty (Cambridge U. Press 2009 forthcoming). In addition to introducing all of the papers in the volume, this essay introduces the organizing themes of the...

Since the introduction of a formal commitments procedure in EU antitrust policy (Article 9 of Council Regulation 1/2003), the European Commission has extensively settled cases of alleged anticompetitive practices. In this paper, we use a formal model of law enforcement (Bebchuk, 1984; Shavell, 1988)...