Merger Policy with Merger Choice

Volker Nocke (University of Mannheim)

Riccardo Faini CEIS Seminars

Riccardo Faini CEIS Seminars
When

Friday, March 16, 2012 h. 12:00-13:30

Where
Aula B - Primo piano
Description

We analyze the optimal policy of an antitrust authority towards horizontal mergers when merger proposals are endogenous and firms choose which of several mutually exclusive mergers to propose. In our model, the optimal policy of an antitrust authority that seeks to maximize expected consumer surplus imposes a tougher standard on "larger" mergers, i.e., those involving firms with a larger premerger market share, or equivalently, leading to a larger naively-computed post-merger Herfindahl index. The optimal policy is a response to a bias in firms.proposal incentives: firms always propose a larger merger when it is better for consumers than a smaller one, but sometimes will propose the larger one even when it is worse for consumers.

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