Endogenous Mergers In Concentrated Markets

Provides a clear, concise and practical overview of the key economic techniques and evidence employed in European merger control.

This second volume of the Handbook includes original contribution by experts in the field. It provides up-to-date surveys of the most relevant applications of game theory to industrial organization. The book covers both classical as well as new IO topics such as mergers in markets with homogeneous and differentiated goods, leniency and coordinated effects in cartels and mergers, static and dynamic contests, consumer search and product safety, strategic delegation, platforms and network effects, auctions, environmental and resource economics, intellectual property, healthcare, corruption, experimental industrial organization and empirical models of R&D.

Does seller concentration in a market raise prices? Many attempts have been made to test this classic hypothesis of oligopoly theory, none of them convincing. Leonard Weiss and his colleagues have devised and applied a systematic set of direct tests of the concentration price hypothesis. In an innovative series of empirical studies, they examine the effect of concentration on price for the same item sold in markets that vary because of space, time, or transaction. They conclude that concentration does indeed tend to raise price. Studies in the book's first part test specific aspects of the concentration price hypothesis. These include a case study of Portland cement deregulated fares, the relation between change in price and change in concentration in the US and in the EEC, the effect of the numbers of bidders in auctions, and the effects of concentration on wages. The book's second part brings together for the first time previously published and widely scattered studies of the concentration price relationship in advertising media, retailing, the railroads, livestock purchasing, and banking. Viewed together, they provide powerful support for the role of concentration in determining price. Leonard W. Weiss is Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.P>

The first volume of this wide-ranging Handbook contains original contributions by world-class specialists. It provides up-to-date surveys of the main game-theoretic tools commonly used to model industrial organization topics. The Handbook covers numerous subjects in detail including, among others, the tools of lattice programming, supermodular and aggregative games, monopolistic competition, horizontal and vertically differentiated good models, dynamic and Stackelberg games, entry games, evolutionary games with adaptive players, asymmetric information, moral hazard, learning and information sharing models.