A recurring problem in financial development is to understand which poor quality institutions lead to substantial rent extraction by controllers. When rent extraction is high and its extent difficult to predict, outside investment in firms may decline. Recent work has emphasized the quality of...

We propose a general framework to assess merger policy effectiveness based on standard oligopoly theory and stock market reactions. We focus on four different dimensions of effectiveness: 1) legal certainty, 2) decision errors, 3) reversion of anti-competitive rents, and 4) deterrence. We apply...

We estimate the spillovers on firm profitability and market shares in oligopolistic markets through the transition from an n to an n-1 player oligopoly after a merger in the industry. Competitors are identified via the European Commission s market investigations and our methodology allows us to...

One of the most conspicuous features of mergers is that they come in waves that are correlated with increases in share prices and price/earnings ratios. We use a natural way to discriminate between pure stock market influences on firm decisions and other influences by examining merger patterns...

We derive empirical predictions from the standard investment-cash flow framework on the functioning of internal capital markets (ICM), but circumvent its criticism by focusing on parent cash flow and investment opportunities. We test these predictions using a unique dataset of parent firms and...

One of the most controversial regulatory issues in Europe (and elsewhere) is whether the emerging next-generation access (NGA) infrastructure should be subjected to cost-based access regulation or whether at least a temporary removal of ex ante obligations (“regulatory holidays”) should be...

The EU has been promoting unbundling of the transmission grid from other stages of the electricity supply chain with the aim of fostering competition in the upstream stage of electricity generation. At presence, ownership unbundling is the predominant form of unbundling in Europe. However, the...

This paper is the first to explicitly test for the presence of a trade-off between static and dynamic efficiency and a trade-off between vertical economies and competition in a regulated industry, the electricity industry. We show for 16 European countries over the period 1998–2008 that higher...

Based on a database of 326 merger cases scrutinized by the European Commission between 1990 and 2007, we evaluate the economic impact of the change in Euro-pean merger legislation in 2004. We first propose a general framework to assess merger policy effectiveness, which is based on standard...