Let’s Not Stick Together: Anticipation of Cartel and Merger Control in The Netherlands

Does enforcement action by the Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa) in the case of cartels and mergers produce an anticipatory effect? We use surveys among firms and their advisers to test whether merger plans that may fail to gain clearance from the NMa are not notified and whether the possibility of detection helps to reduce the number of cartels. Our results indicate that enforcement action by the NMa has a preventive effect. Surveys among companies show that 5 % of the notified mergers were modified before notification to forestall possible objections from the NMa. Moreover, for every 100 notifications of mergers there are 13 proposed mergers that are later on abandoned due to merger control. Companies also take account of the Competition Act when drafting contracts, conducting negotiations and holding meetings. Our survey among lawyers and other advisers shows that for every sanction decision taken by the NMa there are almost 5 cases in which, unbeknown to the NMa, a prohibited act has been terminated or modified in response to advice on competition law.     

Foreign Aid in the Presence of Corruption: Differential Games among Donors

We consider two dynamic games of foreign aid. Model 1 deals with the case where donor countries continually feel the warm glow from the act of giving. Model 2 postulates that donors will stop giving aid when a target level of development is reached. In Model 1 , there are multiple equilibria that can be Pareto ranked. In Model 2 , the equilibrium strategies are nonlinear functions of the level of development. The flow of aid falls at a faster and faster rate as the target is approached. An increase in corruption will increase the flow of aid.     

THE WRITINGS OF HENRY A. LATANÉ: A COMPILATION AND ANALYSIS

A native Virginian, Henry A. Latané was born in Buchanan, Botetourt County, in 1907. He received a BA degree from the University of Richmond in 1928 and an MBA degree from Harvard University in 1930. From 1930 to 1940 he was employed by Bankers Trust Company of New York as a security analyst. In 1940 he joined Lionel D. Edie and Company, also in New York, and remained with that firm as a security analyst until 1951. It was while he was with Lionel D. Edie that his first publication appeared, a short article in the Journal of the American Statistical Association ( 1942 ) concerning deriving seasonal factors in economic time series data. The Latané family moved from New York to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1951, where he obtained a Ph.D. degree in Economics from the University of North Carolina in 1957. Before completing his doctorate, however, he had published articles in the Southern Economic Journal, The Journal of Finance, and The Review of Economics and Statistics, all in 1954. His dissertation, completed in 1957 and entitled “Rational Decision Making in Portfolio Management,” provided the foundation for many of the Latané writings that have appeared in subsequent years. Latané joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina as a Research Associate in 1958 and was appointed Professor of Finance and Economics in 1960. He was elected Meade H. Willis, Sr. Professor of Investment Banking in 1969 and achieved emeritus status in 1981. He was one of the first to obtain the professional designation Chartered Financial Analyst in 1965. For many years he has been a member of both the New York Society and the North Carolina Society of Security Analysts. He served as Vice President of the Southern Economic Association during 1974–1976 and was an Associate Editor of The Journal of Finance from 1973 to 1981.     

Gains from trade with overlapping generations

Summary This paper examines the welfare effects of international trade in a context of overlapping generations. It shows that, for a single trading country, uncompensated free trade may be Pareto inferior to autarky. However, for each government there are compensation schemes which guarantee welfare improvements for all local individuals when free trade is allowed, or when for a small open economy the terms of trade improve or the number of tradable goods increases, or when a customs union is formed.We acknowledge with gratitude the probing comments of Henry Y. Wan, Jr. and two anonymous referees.