Trotz schrittweiser Erfolge bei der Liberalisierung der europäischen Elektrizitätsmärkte lässt die Wettbewerbsintensität auf den Großhandelsmärkten in vielen Ländern noch zu wünschen übrig. Dementsprechend sind die Preise im Verhältnis zum wettbewerblichen Referenzmaßstab zu hoch....

Leniency clauses, offering cartelists legal immunity if they blow the whistle on each other, is a recent anti-trust innovation. The authorities wish to thwart cartels and promote competition. This effect is not evident, however; whistle-blowing may enforce trust and collusion by providing a tool...

Im Dezember vergangenen Jahres hat das Europäische Parlament einer Vorlage der Europäischen Kommission zugestimmt, wonach die Schutzrechte für das Design von Auto-Ersatzteilen eingeschränkt werden sollen. Für Ersatzteile, deren Design maßgeblich für ihre Funktionalität oder ihr äußeres...

Leniency programs lower the expected cost of anticompetitive behavior to the extent that they allow colluding firms to pay reduced fines. This paper connects this potential adverse effect to the number of firms involved in the cartel agreement. It is shown that leniency programs may provide...

Something old and important is lost sight of in a case like Ohio v. American Express, the Supreme Court's recent adoption of "platform" or "two-sided market" theory in American antitrust, and in theoretical efforts like the one on which it is based. A rarely discussed idea built in to American...

This paper explores, both theoretically and empirically, the impact of granting antitrust immunity (ATI) to airline alliances in a novel and realistic framework characterized by vertically-differentiated air services. Our theoretical model suggests that non-ATI alliances produce an up-market...

Recent empirical studies demonstrate the significant extent to which a small number of well-known institutional investors have taken on large ownership interests in the majority of large U.S. public companies, including large ownership interests in horizontal competitors. The response to these...

Digital platforms frequently refer their users to competitors. We show that these references induce a business-sharing effect that may relax competition for users, resulting in lower quality of content. More surprisingly, user surplus may also decrease as the quality effect may overwhelm the...

This paper considers cost-reducing R&D investment with spillovers in a Cournot oligopoly with overlapping ownership. We show that overlapping ownership leads to internalization of rivals' profits by firms and find that, for demand not too convex, increases in overlapping ownership increase...