Market shares, R&D agreements, and the EU block exemption

Regulation (EC) No 1217/2010 on the application of Article 101(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to categories of R&D agreements exempts horizontal R&D agreements from antitrust concerns when the combined market share of participants is low enough. We examine the theoretical basis for this criterion by extending existing models so that a subset of firms innovates and participates in an R&D cooperation agreement. We show that the incentive to increase innovation depends on a complex set of effects. We identify one, the outsider effect, that can lead firms to increase R&D under cooperation precisely when their combined market share is high. In a general model in which all firms innovate, we also find that R&D agreements can be more beneficial at higher market shares. We argue that existing theory therefore does not support limiting the exemption to low market shares.