The purpose of this report is to contribute to the analysis of two questions. Should a merger control system take into account efficiency gains from horizontal mergers, and balance these gains against the anti-competitive effects of mergers? If so, how should a system be designed to account for...

This report studies the importance of efficiency gains from horizontal mergers. A general theme throughout this report is that efficiency gains, and their pass-on to consumers, may vary substantially from merger to merger. For this reason it seems appropriate to reconsider current practice in...

The "new electronics technology" in its various manifestations has been very much in the limelight during recent years. It has been associated with future mass unemployment or scary visions of a Brave New World, a grand discontinuity in economic and cultural development. Governments are worried...

Market competition is central to innovative activity, the diffusion process and macro-economic productivity growth. Productivity growth at all levels comes about through institutional reconfiguration in response to the ongoing market process. Stable and sustained long-term growth in output...

We demonstrate a "preemptive merger mechanism" which may explain the empirical puzzle why mergers reduce profits, and raise share prices. A merger may confer strong negative externalilties on the firms outside the merger. If being an "insider" is better than being an "outsider", firms may merge...

Anticompetitive mergers increase competitors' profits, since they reduce competition. Using a model of endogenous mergers, we show that such mergers nevertheless may reduce the competitors' share-prices. Thus, event-studies can not detect anti-competitive mergers. 

There is diverging empirical evidence on the competitive effects of horizontal mergers: consumer prices (and thus presumably competitors' profits) often rise while competitors' share prices fall. Our model of endogenous mergers provides a possible reconciliation. It is demonstrated that...

In intermediate goods markets, both buyers and sellers normally have market power, and sales are based on bilaterally negotiated contracts specifying both price and quantity. In our model, pairs of buyers and sellers meet in bilateral but interdependent Rubinstein-Ståhl negotiations. The...

Swedish Manufacturing Industry is said to be technologically and commercially in good shape. While Swedish wage levels were higher than in all industrial countries in the mid-70s, wages - expressed in international currencies - have now dropped to a mid-position, and real rates of return are...

No abstract.