Market Structure after Horizontal Mergers: Evidence from the Banking Industry

Antitrust agencies use measures of market structure to evaluate the likely competitive effects of proposed mergers, but little is known about how measures of market structure change over time, particularly after consummation of mergers and acquisitions. This paper analyzes the changes in market structure 3 and 5 years after mergers in the US banking industry. Our analysis suggests that concentration decreases and the number of banks increases in banking markets where mergers resulted in high concentration levels. In markets where the level of concentration changed by a relatively large amount, our findings are more ambiguous, as the level of concentration decreases, but no effect is found on the number of competitors.     

寡头竞争均衡、效率促进与市场稳定--一个福利经济学视角

多种条件约束决定了真实经济世界的资源配置效率必然偏离古典微观经济学完全竞争均衡模型关于效率问题的推演逻辑。短期边际成本定价趋势与固定成本长期补偿之间的矛盾决定了完全竞争均衡结构内生着不稳定性。“产品竞争度周期假说”在一定程度上证伪了传统的市场结构进化理论。寡头结构有寡头垄断均衡和寡头竞争均衡之别,后者作为市场结构自然演化的结果,能够增进组织绩效和提高行业效率,并实现市场稳定。因此,市场行为基础上自然演进的行业集中度提高是有益的。市场从竞争到垄断都不惠顾社会公平问题。市场结构、组织效率与经济稳定之关系研究无论对产业组织理论创新还是对产业政策制定来讲都具有重要的现实意义。     

Exclusivity Contracts,Insurance and Financial Market Foreclosure

We study the trade‐off between the positive effects (risk‐sharing) and negative effects (exclusion) of exclusivity contracts. We revisit the seminal model of Aghion and Bolton [ 1987 ] under risk‐aversion and show that although exclusivity contracts induce optimal risk‐sharing, they can be used not only to deter the entry of a more efficient rival into the product market but also to crowd out financial investors willing to insure the buyer at competitive rates. We further show that in a world without financial investors, purely financial bilateral instruments, such as forward contracts, achieve optimal risk‐sharing without distorting product market outcomes. Thus, risk‐sharing alone cannot be invoked to defend exclusivity contracts.     

伊朗回购合同的执行与油气服务市场

伊朗回购合同在规范油气勘探、开发、生产、投资、产能建设和成本回收方面,与其他油气合作合同有所不同,由此产生合同执行过程及管理理念的较大差异.对于回购合同的执行,成本控制和时间是至关重要的.回购合同的作业者以伊朗国家石油公司(NIOC)的名义并代表伊朗国家石油公司进行作业,但并非石油作业的最终决策者.回购合同项目的联合管理委员会、伊方技术代表和协调程序,要求作业者具备扎实的专业知识和现场作业经验,拥有较高的商务操作和处理能力.伊朗石油服务市场呈现作业量有限、市场资源匮乏、市场准入门槛高的特点,作业者必须考虑在伊作业的工程风险.在伊执行回购合同时,应注意合同执行总体计划、选择承包商、工程技术设计方案、作业管理以及项目回收等环节的重点工作.     

隐性契约、专用性投资与资本结构

隐性契约以商品所有权分割为存在前提。专用性投资是企业传递履约动机与履约能力信息的重要通道，受资产专用性与隐性负债导致较高债务融资成本的双重约束，专用性投资应主要依靠权益融资。实证研究表明，专用性投资强度与资本结构呈负相关，隐性契约对资本结构产生影响。本文研究结论为企业融资政策选择提供了新依据。     

Analyzing the Welfare Impacts of Full‐line Forcing Contracts

Theoretical investigations have examined both anti‐competitive and efficiency‐inducing rationales for vertical bundling, making empirical evidence important to understanding its welfare implications. We use an extensive dataset on full‐line forcing contracts between movie distributors and video retailers to empirically measure the impact of vertical bundling on welfare. We identify and measure three primary effects of full‐line forcing contracts: market coverage, leverage and efficiency. We find that bundling increases market coverage and efficiency, but has little impact on one distributor's gaining leverage over another. As a result, we estimate that full‐line forcing contracts increased consumer and producer surplus in this application.     

Cross‐Border Mergers and Market Segmentation

This paper shows that cross‐border mergers are more likely to occur in industries which serve multiple segmented markets rather than a single integrated market, given that cost functions are strictly convex. The product price rises in the market where an acquisition is made but falls in the other, decreasing the acquisition price of other firms (in contrast to the results in the existing merger literature on integrated markets). Although the sum of consumer surplus across the countries may rise in response to a given acquisition, one of the countries gains at the expense of the other.     

The Structure of Licensing Contracts

Industrial organization theory has explored several issues related to licensing, but empirical analyses are extremely rare. We amass a new and detailed dataset on licensing contracts, and use it to present some simple 'facts' concerning licensing behavior. Our analysis reveals robust cross-industries differences in several contractual features, such as exclusivity, cross-licensing, ex-ante versus ex-post technology transfers, and licensing to related versus unrelated parties. We offer an interpretation of these facts based on cross-industry variation in the strength of intellectual property rights.     

Sunk Costs,Accommodation, and the Welfare Effects of Entry

Although economists usually support the unrestricted entry of firms into an industry, entry may lower social welfare if there are setup costs or if entrants have a cost disadvantage. We consider the welfare effects of entry within a standard Cournot model where some of an incumbent firm’s costs are sunk. We find that the range of parameter values over which entry can harm welfare declines monotonically in the fraction of cost that are sunk. Furthermore, the presence of even a small fraction of sunk costs often reverses an assessment that entry harms welfare.     

The Stock Market’s Valuation of R&;D and Market Concentration in Horizontal Mergers

It is well documented that acquirers often pay a large premium to acquire companies in related industries. There are many explanations as to the source of this premium. This study isolates two variables, R&D-intensity and market concentration, and assesses their influence individually and jointly on the deal premium. The results indicate that higher market concentration levels have a negative effect on the deal premium, while higher acquirer R&D-intensity has a positive influence, if the merger could result in a high market concentration level. Furthermore, deal premiums are greater in selected industries and in smaller deal sizes.     

Market Structure and Market Performance

I review studies of the determinants of market performance in the aircraft, passenger airline, supermarket, liner shipping, and hospital industries, and of mergers and market performance in markets for fast food, soft drinks, and retail gasoline. Common factors are that more competitive market structures accompany better market performance, and that firm conduct and industry-specific factors play independent roles.     

Advertising, Its Determinants, and Market Structure

This study derives a formal model of firm advertising behavior and applies it to the industry level to figure out the relationship between advertising and market structure. The firm advertising model shows that both consumer preference andfirm-specific advertising competence jointly determineprofit-maximizing advertising intensity. At the industry level, advertising intensity is represented multiplicatively by consumer preference and a measure of market structure, which reflects the joint distribution of the levels of advertising competence and market shares among firms. The new market structure measure suggests that those single-dimensional measures of market structure such as seller concentration and the Herfindahl index are inadequate in explaining interindustry differences in advertising intensity, and that the long-debated advertising-concentration relationship differs depending primarily on the appropriability of advertising. An empirical analysis of 426 five-digit Korean manufacturing industries shows that an inverted U-shaped relationship between the Herfindahl index and industry advertising intensity is observed for consumer goods industries but a lazy J-shaped relationship for producer goods industries.     

Effects of New Product Pricing on the Evolution of Market Structure

Conventional wisdom suggests that market structure is a determinant of marketing strategy; however, in the case of market pioneers, no market structure exists prior to product introduction. William Redmond examines strategy influences on market structure by assessing the effects of pioneer firms' initial price strategies (penetration pricing versus skim pricing) on the development of subsequent market concentration during the growth stage of the product life cycle. The article describes the analysis of longitudinal data, leading to the detection of significant differences in the evolution of concentration resulting from the different price strategies. Markets pioneered by skim pricers tended to have lower levels of concentration during the growth stage but rose to levels comparable to penetration markets by the onset of market maturity.     

Quantitative Methods for Evaluating the Unilateral Effects of Mergers

We describe the quantitative modeling techniques that are used in horizontal merger review for the evaluation of unilateral effects, and discuss how the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines helped legitimize these methods and motivate scholarly research. We cover markets that feature differentiated products pricing, auctions and negotiations, and homogeneous products, in turn. We also develop connections between quantitative modeling and market concentration screens that are based on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI).

     

The Effects of Taxes and Advertising Restrictions on the Market Structure of the U.S. Cigarette Market

A dynamic oligopoly model of the cigarette industry is developed to study the effects of anti-smoking policies on the market structure of the U.S. cigarette industry. Firms are modeled as competing in price and advertising in a dynamic game. Two commonly used anti-smoking policies – advertising restrictions and tobacco tax increases – are evaluated using calibrated parameters. The simulation results show that in the long run both advertising restrictions and tax increases can successfully reduce the smoking rate. However, advertising restrictions reduce the smoking rate mainly in an indirect way through their impact on the concentration of the market, while tax increases reduce the smoking rate directly and have little effect on the concentration of the market. In addition, in the short run, advertising restrictions have a much smaller effect on reducing the smoking rate than tax increases.     

Mergers,acquisitions, and the pruning of managerial deadwood

This research investigates the role that mergers and acquisitions may play in the disciplining of entrenched and inefficient managers. The relationship between a company's performance history and its subsequent top management turnover is assessed for a sample of target companies, their parents, and a control group of companies not involved in merger and acquisition activity. The results reveal that target company top management turnover is higher than ‘normal’ in the 2 years immediately following a merger or acquisition, but there is no relationship between previous target company performance and its subsequent top management turnover. Further analyses indicate that first-year target company turnover rates are associated with a history of relatively poor parent company performance, while second-year turnover rates are associated with a history of relatively good parent company performance.     

Effects of FTA Provisions on the Market Structure of the Korean Automobile Industry

The Korean passenger car market is dominated by a few domestic producers. In this paper, we investigate whether this market structure is the result of import tariffs and taxes that penalize foreign manufacturers. Our counterfactual simulation under two FTA scenarios shows that the market shares of imported and domestic cars show minimal adjustments, suggesting that import tariffs and taxes may not explain the lack of penetration of import cars in Korea. We predict changes in consumer surplus and discuss the policy implications of our findings.     

Unilateral Competitive Effects of Mergers: Upward Pricing Pressure, Product Quality, and Other Extensions

This paper lays out and extends a derivation of the ??upward pricing pressure?? (??UPP??) tool for analyzing unilateral competitive effects of horizontal mergers on differentiated products that is featured in the 2010 Guidelines. In the most novel extension, the merger alters the differentiated products?? qualities. The resulting tool analyzes whether the merger creates upward pressure on quality-adjusted or ??hedonic?? prices. Another extension applies where one firm acquires just a partial equity stake in a competing firm. The paper also develops the Gross Upward Market Power Pressure Index (GUMPPI) that generalizes UPP measures to include output as well as price effects.     

Market Structure, Strike Activity, and Union Wage Settlements

We attempt a synthesis of the industrial relations market structure hypothesis with the modern asymmetric information theory of wage and strike outcomes. The industrial relations literature contains arguments indicating that wage settlements should be positively related to the degree of product market sales concentration and the degree of product market coverage by the union. In our empirical analysis of the periods 1970–1980 (strikes) and 1976–1980 (wages), we find that the relation between trade-adjusted sales concentration and wage settlements is positive at low and intermediate levels of concentration but negative at the highest levels of concentration. The relation is always negative for strike probabilities. We also find that the trade-adjusted per cent of the product market covered by the same union and the percentage covered by other unions are positively related to both wage settlements and strike probabilities.