The determinants of merger waves: An international perspective

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 for both listed and unlisted firms. If “real” changes in the economy drive merger waves, as some neoclassical theories of mergers predict, both listed and unlisted firms should experience waves. We find significant differences between listed and unlisted firms as predicted by behavioral theories of merger waves.     

Pass‐Through and the Prediction of Merger Price Effects

We use Monte Carlo experiments to study how pass‐through can improve merger price predictions, focusing on the first order approximation (FOA) proposed in Jaffe and Weyl [ 2013 ]. FOA addresses the functional form misspecification that can exist in standard merger simulations. We find that the predictions of FOA are tightly distributed around the true price effects if pass‐through is precise, but that measurement error in pass‐through diminishes accuracy. As a comparison to FOA, we also study a methodology that uses pass‐through to select among functional forms for use in simulation. This alternative also increases accuracy relative to standard merger simulation and proves more robust to measurement error.     

Competition and the performance of hospital markets

This paper explores the relationship between competition and market performance for the primarily nonprofit industry, hospital services. A theoretical framework is adopted that assumes hospitals compete for physician affiliations on the basis of hospital price and resources provided. The model indicates that monopoly power leads to higher quality-adjusted hospital prices, resulting in a reduction in the level of hospital resources consumed. This reduction can occur through admissions, patient length of stay, or resources consumed per patient-day. A regression analysis reveals that all three are reduced as market concentration increases.     

Ex post Merger Evaluation in the U.K. Retail Market for Books

This paper evaluates the price effects of the merger of two major U.K. book retailers. We use a dataset containing monthly scanner data on a sample of 200 books in 50 local markets for four years around the merger. We compare the price changes after the merger in shops located in areas where both chains were present before the merger and in areas where only one chain was present. We also investigate the country‐wide effect of the merger. We find that the merger did not result in any price increase either at the local or at the national level.     

Proper Treatment of Buyer Power in Merger Review

In this paper, we assess the appropriate treatment of buyer power in merger review. We conclude that, for changes in bargaining outcomes due to a buyer merger to create efficiencies, it must be the case that, post-merger, the parties are able to arrive at a more optimal price schedule, perhaps due to reduced transactions costs. Empirical tests will be important to the evaluation of such efficiencies. We further conclude that, under certain conditions, powerful buyers may be able to prevent higher prices from a merger of suppliers. Once again, empirical tests should guide the evaluation of this merger defense.     

Retail Mergers and Food Prices: Evidence from France

This paper analyzes the impact of a merger in the French supermarket industry on food prices. Using consumer panel data, we compare the changes in prices for merging and rival firms in affected and comparison markets. We use a novel definition of affected markets when some firms have a local pricing strategy and others a more centralized pricing strategy. We find that prices increase significantly following the merger, and that the merging firms lose market shares. For the rivals, the price increases are larger in local markets, in which concentration increased and differentiation changed after the merger.     

Mergers when firms compete by choosing both price and promotion

We analyze the bias from predicting merger effects using structural models of price competition when firms actually compete using both price and promotion. We extend the standard merger simulation framework to allow for competition over both price and promotion and ask what happens if we ignore promotional competition. This model is applied to the super-premium ice cream industry, where a merger between Nestlé and Dreyer's was challenged by the Federal Trade Commission. We find that ignoring promotional competition significantly biases the predicted price effects of a merger to monopoly (5% instead of 12%). About three-fourths of the difference can be attributed to estimation bias (estimated demand is too elastic), with the remainder due to extrapolation bias from assuming post-merger promotional activity stays constant (instead it declines by 31%).     

On the competitive effects of vertical integration by a research laboratory

An independent research laboratory owns a patented process innovation ready to be used by an industry that produces differentiated goods. We analyze whether the laboratory prefers to license the innovation as an external patentee or to merge with one of the firms in the industry, licensing the innovation as an internal patentee. Under linear demand and Cournot competition, we show first, that the vertical merger is profitable only in the case of small innovations, whereas a merger increases welfare only for significant innovations; second, all profitable vertical mergers reduce welfare. However, some profitable mergers are welfare improving under price competition.     

Simulating Hospital Merger Simulations*

We perform a Monte Carlo experiment to assess the performance of three hospital merger simulation methods. Our analysis proceeds as follows: (i) specify a theoretical model of hospital markets and use it to generate “true” price effects for many simulated mergers; (ii) for each simulated merger, generate data of the kind commonly available in real-world merger analysis and apply the simulation methods to those data; and (iii) compare the predictions of the simulation methods to the true price effects. All three simulation methods perform reasonably well. We also develop a method for predicting price effects that extends Garmon [2017].     

The Efficiencies Defense in the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines

We analyze the efficiencies defense that is contained in the 2010 Merger Guidelines, which provides the most current statement of the Agencies?? enforcement philosophy and procedure. Most of our attention centers on efficiencies in production, but we also address merger-specific efficiencies that may lead to improved product quality, enhanced services, or even to the introduction of entirely new products. We begin with the analytically clean case of merger-specific efficiencies that are accompanied by monopoly power. From the perspective of either consumer welfare or social welfare, this presents the welfare analysis that should guide merger policy. We, then, examine the errors that may arise due to the restricted role that efficiencies play in Section 7 enforcement. Finally, we close with some policy recommendations.     

SCREENING AND MERGER ACTIVITY*

In our paper, the target of a proposed merger, by setting a reserve price, is able to screen prospective acquirers according to their (expected) ability to generate merger‐specific synergies. Both empirical evidence and many merger models suggest that the difference between high and low‐synergy mergers becomes smaller during booms. Thus, a target's opportunity cost for sorting out relatively less fitting acquirers increases and, hence, targets screen less tightly during booms, which leads to a hike in merger activity. Our screening mechanism not only predicts that merger activity is intense during booms and subdued during recessions but is also consistent with other stylized facts about takeovers and generates novel testable predictions.     

Recent Developments at the CMA: 2018–2019

We discuss three important cases that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has completed over the past year: The first two cases—the Experian/ClearScore merger and the Hotel Online Booking enforcement case—demonstrate our recent work on digital industries. We provide an overview of developments in this area and the CMA’s evolving approach to addressing such cases. The third case was a proposed merger between two of the UK’s largest grocery chains: Sainsbury’s and Asda. This proposed merger was ultimately prohibited by the CMA.

     

Merger Simulation in the Presence of Large Choice Sets and Consumer Stockpiling: The Case of the Bottled Juice Industry

We simulate the price effects of several hypothetical mergers in the shelf-stable bottled juice industry. In doing so, we highlight the effects of consumer stockpiling on demand elasticity estimates and subsequent merger simulations. This task is complicated by a large number of choice alternatives within the bottled juice category. To address this challenge we employ a demand model based on the Distance Metric (DM) approach of Pinkse et al. (Econometrica 70:1111–1153, 2002). We find that merger simulations that do not account for consumer stockpiling behavior underestimate the permanent price changes that are likely to occur due to a merger.      

On the economics of nonprofit sellers: Output policies in community hospitals

In applications of the theory of the nonprofit firm it is commonly assumed that output and sales are equal. This paper proposes that the nonprofit firm may plan to produce, and actually produce, an output larger than it sells. We call such a strategy an "excess output" production policy. The policy can lead to chronic excess capacity, and it always implies that seller average revenue exceeds unit costs evaluated at the level of sales. Using the nonprofit community hospital as an example, the paper examines the characteristics of excess output policies and the possibilities for controlling their performance impacts. Data on a sample of U.S. community hospitals are used to test for the existence of excess output policies in the hospitals are used to test for the existence of excess output policies in the hospital sector. The results give qualified support for the conclusion that some hospitals follow excess output production policies.     

Entry Deterrence,Concentration, and Merger Policy

Review of Industrial Organization - In merger enforcement, entry is considered to be a factor that potentially can mitigate otherwise anti-competitive effects of a merger. The current framework for...     

Regulation of price increases

U.S. federal and state governments rarely regulate healthcare price levels, but do regulate price changes for pharmaceuticals, hospitals, and health insurance. Previous research showed that limiting price increases can raise launch prices and reduce both profit and social welfare, assuming consumers are myopic. We show that with forward-looking consumers, limiting price increases can have the opposite effect, that is, launch prices fall while profit and social welfare rise. Ironically, inflation regulation can cause inflation to rise, but only because firms are reducing launch prices to make the regulation bind and credibly commit to future prices.     

The Price Effects of the Delta/Northwest Airline Merger

This paper examines the price effects of the merger between Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines. Empirical analysis finds that, other things equal, the fares for airport-pairs where Delta and Northwest competed with each other prior to the merger did not increase by much following the merger. This result is consistent with the additional finding that the impact of changes in low-cost carrier competition is large while the effect of changes in competition from legacy carriers is slight. Since both Delta and Northwest Airlines are legacy carriers, the results for other legacies suggest that the merger should not have exerted a dramatic impact on fares.     

Merger efficiency gains: Evidence from a large transport merger in france

Many industries are seeing an increase in concentration, leading to a discussion on the effectiveness of horizontal merger enforcement. The policy debate shows that one of the key arguments put forward when supporting potential mergers is the possibility of realization of merger efficiency gains, specifically in the transport industry. Yet, there exists little empirical evidence on the actual effects of realized mergers on cost efficiencies. We exploit a large and highly debated merger that took place in the French transport industry to evaluate whether a merger between two major transport groups may give rise to merger efficiency gains. We exploit the industry setting to employ a difference-in-differences methodology evaluating the effect of the merger on operating costs of merging transport groups. Our results show that, no matter the specification considered, we cannot conclude that the merger resulted in any merger specific efficiency gains for the merging parties. Our study relies on the use of several control groups and is robust to a great number of robustness checks as well as to the introduction of heterogeneous treatment effects, depending on the identity of the merging party, as well as the closeness of competition of local operators. Overall, our study contributes to a growing number of case studies undertaken by economists that can help determine whether horizontal merger policy is being properly enforced.     

Geographic Market Definition in the Merger Guidelines: A Retrospective Analysis

Since the initial Merger Guidelines in 1968, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have revised their merger enforcement screen over the course of six versions. This article examines the evolution of the geographic market component of the Guidelines and the economic implications of changing standards of market delineation on merger enforcement. Using an illustration from the beer industry, we chronicle the development of geographic market definition and its varying effects on merger enforcement over the past 50 years.