Download or read book Critical Loss Analysis in Market Definition and Merger Control written by Kai Hüschelrath and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Economic Assessment of Mergers Under European Competition Law written by Daniel Gore and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a clear, concise and practical overview of the key economic techniques and evidence employed in European merger control.
Download or read book Critical Loss written by Malcolm B. Coate and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Loss analysis is an empirical implementation of the hypothetical monopolist test for market definition contained in the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission Horizontal Merger Guidelines. As usually applied, the test accepts the proposed market definition as relevant for antitrust analysis whenever the predicted loss in volume (Actual Loss) from a small, but significant and non-transitory price increase is less than the computed break-even loss in volume (Critical Loss). Critics complain that the predicted Actual Loss must be linked to the Critical Loss, claiming both calculations depend heavily upon the firm/industry margin. We note that the critics derive their result from a particular modeling structure useful only in markets where product differentiation leads to a simple form of price-based competition. Moreover, no clear link between Critical Loss and Actual Loss is likely when the markets are best defined with either homogeneous goods or dynamic differentiation assumptions. Thus, the critics have only introduced a special case generalization of the standard Critical Loss methodology.
Download or read book Models Mathematics and Critical Loss written by Malcolm B. Coate and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Loss Analysis is an empirical implementation of the hypothetical monopolist test for market definition contained in the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission Horizontal Merger Guidelines. As usually applied, the test accepts the proposed market definition as relevant for antitrust analysis whenever the predicted Actual Loss from a small, but significant and non-transitory price increase is less than the computed break-even Critical Loss. While the traditional analysis does not posit an analytical link between the predicted Actual Loss and the break-even Critical Loss, some economists claim the two concepts are mathematically related. They believe that the Critical Loss test will almost never generate broad market definitions in high margin markets. We suggest that the critics overstate their case, because they have only identified a special case modeling structure which may have limited applicability. Revised analyses, drawing on the concepts introduced in this paper, are available elsewhere on SSRN. Text based on Sections II and IV form the core of Coate, Malcolm B. and Joseph J. Simons, “Critical Loss: Modeling and Application Issues,” 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1520069. Text building on Section III, along with Appendix A was published as Coate, Malcolm B. and Joseph J. Simons, “Critical Loss vs. Diversion: Clearing up the Confusion,” GCP Antitrust Chronicle, Dec. 2009. Through the courtesy of the editors, this paper is also available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1562006.
Download or read book Competition Policy Analysis written by Kai Hüschelrath and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-09-08 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Competition policy is an integral and prominent part of economic policy-making in the European Union. The EU Treaty prescribes its member states to conduct economic policy ‘in accordance with the principle of an open market economy with free competition’. More precisely, the goal of EU competition policy is “to defend and develop effective competition in the common market” (European Commission, 2000: 7). Under its Commissioners van Miert, Monti and, most - cently, Kroes the EU Commission has stepped up its effort to pursue and achieve the aforementioned goal. A number of so-called hard-core cartels, such as the - torious “vitamin cartel” led by Roche, have been detected, tried in violation of Art. 81 of the Maastricht Accord and punished with severe fines. Also Microsoft was hit hard by the strong hand of the Commission having been severely fined for - ploiting a dominant market position. Economic analysis has been playing an increasingly significant role in the Commission’s examination of competition law cases. This holds true in particular for merger control. Here, however, the Commission has had to accept some poi- ant defeats in court, such as the Court’s reversals of Airtours-First Choice or GE- Honeywell. Among other things, the European Court of Justice found the e- nomic analysis as conducted by the EU’s Directorate General for Competition to be flawed and the conclusions drawn not to be convincing. These rejections by the courts have stirred up the scholarly debate on the conceptual foundations of Eu- pean competition policy.
Download or read book Should DOJ s Controversial Approach to Market Definition Control Merger Litigation the Case of US V H R Block written by Joseph J. Simons and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sometimes what appears to be a little, almost imperceptible change can have a huge impact on a policy regime. The recently revised DOJ/FTC Horizontal Merger Guidelines contain such a change, as the document recognizes the importance of Critical Loss Analysis in defining a market, but introduces a theoretical construct to control the analysis. This approach imposes a structure based on the economist's Lerner index, and then applies a specific style of diversion analysis to compute the actual loss to a hypothetical price increase. We show that this methodology almost guarantees narrow markets, a change that could support a very significant increase in the level of merger enforcement. However, we also show how this aggressive policy result depends on specific assumptions that are often not justified. Change these assumptions and the traditional implications of a critical loss analysis are restored. The recent Department of Justice (DOJ) challenge of H&R Block's proposed acquisition of the TaxACT software is used to illustrate the problem. Unjustified theoretical assumptions allowed the DOJ's expert economist to testify to a narrow market that virtually guaranteed that the merger would be found anticompetitive. In effect, theory, if allowed to control market definition analysis, would significantly reduce the plaintiff's burden of proof and expand the potential for merger enforcement.
Download or read book Merger Control in Europe written by Ioannis Kokkoris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the phenomenon of mergers that may result in non-coordinated effects in oligopolistic markets. Such cases are sometimes referred to as "non-collusive oligopolies", or "gap cases" and there is a concern that they might not be covered by the substantive test that some Member States use for merger assessment. Ioannis Kokkoris examines the argument that the European Community Merger Regulation (Regulation 4064/89) did not capture gap cases and considers the extent to which the revised substantive test in Regulation 139/2004 deals with the problem of non-collusive oligopolies. The author identifies actual examples of mergers that gave rise to a problem of non-coordinated effects in oligopolistic markets, both in the EU and in other jurisdictions, and analyses the way in which these cases were dealt with in practice. The book considers legal systems such as United Kingdom, United States, Australia and New Zealand. The book investigates whether there is any difference in the assessment of non-collusive oligopolies between the various substantive tests which have been adopted for merger assessment in various jurisdictions. The book also looks at the various methodological tools available to assist competition authorities and the professional advisers of merging firms to identify whether a particular merger might give rise to anticompetitive effects and explores the type of market structure in which a merger is likely to lead to non-coordinated effects in oligopolistic markets.
Download or read book A Critical Analysis of Critical Loss Analysis written by Federal Trade Commission and published by . This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical loss analysis is often used to argue that firms with large margins have more to lose from a reduction in sales and hence are less likely to increase prices. This argument ignores the fact that profit-maximizing competitors who do not coordinate their pricing only have large margins if their customers are not very price sensitive. In this paper, we explore the implications of critical loss analysis using an internally consistent model of oligopoly. We show that, under the assumptions made in the standard critical loss analysis, firms with larger pre-merger margins are more likely to raise prices than are firms with smaller margins, other things equal. This reinforces the traditional view that mergers are more likely to harm consumers when the merging firms have greater market power, as measured by their margins. We also derive internally consistent formulas for evaluating the profitability of price increases when defining markets and evaluating unilateral competitive effects.
Download or read book Market definition and market power in the platform economy written by Jens-Uwe Franck and published by Centre on Regulation in Europe asbl (CERRE). This book was released on 2019-05-08 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the rise of digital platforms and the natural tendency of markets involving platforms to become concentrated, competition authorities and courts are more frequently in a position to investigate and decide merger and abuse cases that involve platforms. This report provides guidance on how to define markets and on how to assess market power when dealing with two-sided platforms. DEFINITION Competition authorities and courts are well advised to uniformly use a multi-markets approach when defining markets in the context of two-sided platforms. The multi-markets approach is the more flexible instrument compared to the competing single-market approach that defines a single market for both sides of a platform, as the former naturally accounts for different substitution possibilities by the user groups on the two sides of the platform. While one might think of conditions under which a single-market approach could be feasible, the necessary conditions are so severe that it would only be applicable under rare circumstances. To fully appreciate business activities in platform markets from a competition law point of view, and to do justice to competition law’s purpose, which is to protect consumer welfare, the legal concept of a “market” should not be interpreted as requiring a price to be paid by one party to the other. It is not sufficient to consider the activities on the “unpaid side” of the platform only indirectly by way of including them in the competition law analysis of the “paid side” of the platform. Such an approach would exclude certain activities and ensuing positive or negative effects on consumer welfare altogether from the radar of competition law. Instead, competition practice should recognize straightforwardly that there can be “markets” for products offered free of charge, i.e. without monetary consideration by those who receive the product. ASSESSMENT The application of competition law often requires an assessment of market power. Using market shares as indicators of market power, in addition to all the difficulties in standard markets, raises further issues for two-sided platforms. When calculating revenue shares, the only reasonable option is to use the sum of revenues on all sides of the platform. Then, such shares should not be interpreted as market shares as they are aggregated over two interdependent markets. Large revenue shares appear to be a meaningful indicator of market power if all undertakings under consideration serve the same sides. However, they are often not meaningful if undertakings active in the relevant markets follow different business models. Given potentially strong cross-group external effects, market shares are less apt in the context of two-sided platforms to indicate market power (or the lack of it). Barriers to entry are at the core of persistent market power and, thus, the entrenchment of incumbent platforms. They deserve careful examination by competition authorities. Barriers to entry may arise due to users’ coordination failure in the presence of network effect. On two-sided platforms, users on both sides of the market have to coordinate their expectations. Barriers to entry are more likely to be present if an industry does not attract new users and if it does not undergo major technological change. Switching costs and network effects may go hand in hand: consumer switching costs sometimes depend on the number of platform users and, in this case, barriers to entry from consumer switching costs increase with platform size. Since market power is related to barriers to entry, the absence of entry attempts may be seen as an indication of market power. However, entry threats may arise from firms offering quite different services, as long as they provide a new home for users’ attention and needs.
Download or read book Competition Authorities in South Eastern Europe written by Boris Begović and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-20 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book provides answers to key open questions concerning competition policy in emerging economies, with a focus on South Eastern Europe. The contributions address two major issues. One is the design of competition policy and the national competition authorities that enforce it, including the topics of competition advocacy and state aid control; the other is the use of economic methods in competition law enforcement, especially in the cases of relevant market definition and merger control. Many lessons learned in the countries of South Eastern Europe can be applied to the emerging markets of other regions. As such, the findings presented here will be highly relevant for officials and staff at national competition authorities, advisers to legislators shaping national competition policy, competition law professionals, and university students alike.
Download or read book Modern Industrial Organization written by Dennis W. Carlton and published by Addison Wesley. This book was released on 2000 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text offers modern coverage of modern industrial organizations, including strategic behaviour and game theory. It uses a unified structure to analyse theories and empirical evidence about the organization of firms and indutries.
Download or read book Do Merger Simulation and Critical Loss Analysis Differ Under the SLC and Dominance Test written by Ioannis Kokkoris and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this article we will evaluate whether the application and the efficiency of two types of empirical analysis in the assessment of mergers in jurisdictions applying the dominance and the SLC tests are different due to the application of the different legal substantive test. Thus, we will consider whether the different legal substantive test leads to different application of the empirical analysis or to different assessment of mergers leading to non-coordinated effects by courts, based on the same empirical analysis.We will address two methods of empirical analysis that concern two essential stages in the assessment of a merger. One such type of empirical analysis refers to the assessment of the unilateral effects of the merger on competition and one that is used in the definition of the relevant market. These two methods are the merger simulation and the critical loss analysis respectively. We will investigate their theoretical background and see how these two methods are applied in practice in cases brought before courts in jurisdictions applying the dominance test and the SLC test. The jurisdictions we will focus in this article are the USA and the European Union. The next part of this article briefly deals with the SLC and the dominance test. The second part of this article deals with the mechanics and the case law behind the two above-mentioned empirical methods. Finally, in the last part of this article we will evaluate whether the methodology behind merger simulation, used in the evaluation of the competitive effects, and critical loss analysis, used in market definition, varies depending on the substantive test that competition authorities apply to assess mergers.
Download or read book The Antitrust Paradox written by Robert Bork and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most important book on antitrust ever written. It shows how antitrust suits adversely affect the consumer by encouraging a costly form of protection for inefficient and uncompetitive small businesses.
Download or read book Merger Control in Europe written by Ioannis Kokkoris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the phenomenon of mergers that might result in non-coordinated effects in oligopolistic markets, identifying examples of these mergers both in the EU and in other jurisdictions including the UK, USA, Italy, Hungary, Finland, and Australia, and analyzing how these cases were dealt with in practice.
Download or read book Critical Thinking about critical Loss in Antitrust written by Kenneth Danger and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Quantitative Techniques for Competition and Antitrust Analysis written by Peter Davis and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-16 with total page 1185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book combines practical guidance and theoretical background for analysts using empirical techniques in competition and antitrust investigations. Peter Davis and Eliana Garcés show how to integrate empirical methods, economic theory, and broad evidence about industry in order to provide high-quality, robust empirical work that is tailored to the nature and quality of data available and that can withstand expert and judicial scrutiny. Davis and Garcés describe the toolbox of empirical techniques currently available, explain how to establish the weight of pieces of empirical work, and make some new theoretical contributions. The book consistently evaluates empirical techniques in light of the challenge faced by competition analysts and academics--to provide evidence that can stand up to the review of experts and judges. The book's integrated approach will help analysts clarify the assumptions underlying pieces of empirical work, evaluate those assumptions in light of industry knowledge, and guide future work aimed at understanding whether the assumptions are valid. Throughout, Davis and Garcés work to expand the common ground between practitioners and academics.
Download or read book Merger Control Review written by Ilene Knable Gotts and published by Law Business Research Ltd.. This book was released on 2017-09-20 with total page 871 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Merger Control Review, edited by Ilene Knable Gotts of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, provides an overview of the process in 38 jurisdictions, as well as a discussion of recent decisions, strategic considerations and likely upcoming developments in Merger Control. Given the ability of most competition agencies with pre-merger notification laws to delay, and even block, a transaction, it is imperative to take each jurisdiction - small or large, new or mature - seriously. It is, therefore, imperative that counsel for such a transaction develops a comprehensive plan prior to, or immediately upon, execution of an agreement concerning where and when to file notification with competition authorities regarding such a transaction. The intended readership of this book comprises both in-house and outside counsel who may be involved in the competition review of cross-border transactions. In our endeavour to keep our readers well informed, we have expanded the jurisdictions covered by this book to include the newer regimes as well with several special chapters covering US, EU and Chinese Merger Control in Media and Pharmaceutical sectors. Contributors include: Susan Ning, King & Wood Mallesons; James Langenfeld, Navigant; Goenenc Guerkaynak, ELIG; Mr Jordan Ellison, Slaughter and May."e;Each country section provides an informative overview of recent and expected enforcement trends... A very useful book!"e; - Jean-Yves Art, Associate General Counsel, Microsoft, Belgium
