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Fifty is the New Forty: EU Merger Policy Permits Higher Market Shares After the 2004 Reform

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  • Federico Mini

Abstract

I analyze empirically all of the European Commission’s decisions regarding “unilateral effects” aspects of horizontal mergers before and after the 2004 reform, which introduced the “significant impediment to effective competition” test in merger policy. I find that, after the reform, the Commission did not change its stance toward mergers to monopoly or quasi-monopoly (almost always challenged) and mergers in un-concentrated markets (almost never). The new test produced more frequent challenges when the combined entity is not the largest firm, but these cases remain rare. The Commission’s stance toward mergers that fall between these polar opposites appears to have been tougher pre-reform ceteris paribus.

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  • Federico Mini, 2018. "Fifty is the New Forty: EU Merger Policy Permits Higher Market Shares After the 2004 Reform," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 53(3), pages 535-561, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:revind:v:53:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11151-018-9645-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s11151-018-9645-9
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    1. Tomaso Duso & Klaus Gugler & Florian Szücs, 2013. "An Empirical Assessment of the 2004 EU Merger Policy Reform," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 123(11), pages 596-619, November.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Bernhardt, Lea & Dewenter, Ralf, 2022. "The Impact of the More Economic Approach on EU Merger Decisions," Working Paper 195/2021, Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg.
    3. Pauline Affeldt, 2019. "EU Merger Policy Predictability Using Random Forests," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1800, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.

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