Competitive Effects of Horizontal Mergers With Asymmetric Firms

The Competitive Effects of Mergers Between Asymmetric Firms

The 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines suggest that the merger of two relatively weak competitors may result in a strong competitor and may lead to lower prices, despite the resulting increase in concentration. This paper introduces incomplete information into a simple model of repeated competition among firms that are asymmetric in their likely degree of efficiency at each stage of competition....

The Impact of Access to Consumer Data on the Competitive Effects of Horizontal Mergers

The influence of firms’ ability to employ individualized pricing on the welfare consequences of horizontal mergers is examined in location models. In a two-to-one merger, the merger reduces consumer surplus more when firms can price discriminate based on individual preferences compared to when they cannot. However, the opposite holds true in a three-to-two merger, in which the reduction in cons...

Evaluating the Likely Competitive Effects of Horizontal and Vertical Mergers: a New Approach

Horizontal mergers with free entry

We consider the impact of horizontal mergers in the presence of free entry and exit. In contrast to much of the previous literature on horizontal mergers, our model yields predictions that seem intuitively reasonable: with only moderate cost synergies mergers of a small number of industry participants are beneficial (even under quantity competition), there is no “free rider problem” in that ins...

On vertical mergers and their competitive effects

It is well known that vertical integration can change the pricing incentive of an upstream producer. However, it has not been noticed that vertical integration may also change the pricing incentive of a downstream producer and the incentive of a competitor in choosing input suppliers. I develop an equilibrium theory of vertical merger that incorporates these additional strategic considerations....