IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/isu/genres/1699.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cournot Oligopoly Conditions Under Which Any Horizontal Merger is Profitable

Author

Listed:
  • Hennessy, David A.

Abstract

Findings in economic theory suggest that horizontal mergers involving firms with aggregate market share less than 50% are unlikely to be motivated by the consequent reduction in competitivity. The results arise because, absent cost efficiencies, quantity-setting firms in small mergers are impoverished by the merger. We demonstrate that this conclusion is a consequence of the strong restrictions imposed on the demand function, and we identify a well-behaved demand function such that any set of merging firms benefits from the reduction in competition even when there are no cost efficiencies.

Suggested Citation

  • Hennessy, David A., 2000. "Cournot Oligopoly Conditions Under Which Any Horizontal Merger is Profitable," Staff General Research Papers Archive 1699, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:isu:genres:1699
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cheung, Francis K., 1992. "Two remarks on the equilibrium analysis of horizontal merger," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 119-123, September.
    2. Farrell, Joseph & Shapiro, Carl, 1990. "Horizontal Mergers: An Equilibrium Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 107-126, March.
    3. Kamien, Morton I. & Zang, Israel, 1991. "Competitively cost advantageous mergers and monopolization," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 323-338, August.
    4. Stephen W. Salant & Sheldon Switzer & Robert J. Reynolds, 1983. "Losses From Horizontal Merger: The Effects of an Exogenous Change in Industry Structure on Cournot-Nash Equilibrium," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 98(2), pages 185-199.
    5. Morton I. Kamien & Israel Zang, 1990. "The Limits of Monopolization Through Acquisition," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 105(2), pages 465-499.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nilssen, Tore & Sorgard, Lars, 1998. "Sequential horizontal mergers," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(9), pages 1683-1702, November.
    2. Inderst, Roman & Wey, Christian, 2004. "The incentives for takeover in oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(8-9), pages 1067-1089, November.
    3. Benchekroun, Hassan & Breton, Michèle & Chaudhuri, Amrita Ray, 2019. "Mergers in nonrenewable resource oligopolies and environmental policies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 35-52.
    4. Dockner, Engelbert J. & Gaunersdorfer, Andrea, 2001. "On the profitability of horizontal mergers in industries with dynamic competition," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 195-216, August.
    5. Ulus Aysegul & Yildiz Halis M., 2012. "On the Relationship between Tariff Levels and the Nature of Mergers," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-40, December.
    6. Clark, Derek J. & Sand, Jan Yngve, 2010. "Endogenous technology sharing in R&D intensive industries," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 4, pages 1-48.
    7. Steffen Ziss, 2005. "Horizontal Mergers and Successive Oligopoly," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 99-114, June.
    8. Jozsef Molnar, 2002. "Preemptive Horizontal Mergers: Theory and Evidence," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 0213, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    9. Fridolfsson, Sven-Olof & Stennek, Johan, 2005. "Hold-up of anti-competitive mergers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(9-10), pages 753-775, December.
    10. Polasky, Stephen & Mason, Charles F., 1998. "On the welfare effects of mergers: Short run vs. long run," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 1-24.
    11. Petri Lehto & Mihkel M. Tombak, 1997. "Consolidations and the Sequence of Acquisitions to Monopoly," CIG Working Papers FS IV 97-22, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).
    12. Michael Higl & Peter Welzel, 2005. "Intra-firm Coordination and Horizontal Merger," Discussion Paper Series 269, Universitaet Augsburg, Institute for Economics.
    13. Ziss, Steffen, 2001. "Horizontal mergers and delegation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(3-4), pages 471-492, March.
    14. Walter Ferrarese, 2020. "When Multiple Merged Entities Lead in Stackelberg Oligopolies," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 56(1), pages 131-142, February.
    15. Ray Chaudhuri, A., 2011. "Cross-Border Mergers and Market Segmentation (Replaces CentER DP 2010-096)," Discussion Paper 2011-112, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    16. John S. Heywood & Matthew Mcginty, 2007. "Convex Costs And The Merger Paradox Revisited," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(2), pages 342-349, April.
    17. Zhou, Wen, 2008. "Endogenous horizontal mergers under cost uncertainty," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 903-912, July.
    18. Larry D. Qiu & Wen Zhou, 2007. "Merger waves: a model of endogenous mergers," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(1), pages 214-226, March.
    19. Jovanovic, Dragan & Wey, Christian, 2012. "An equilibrium analysis of efficiency gains from mergers," DICE Discussion Papers 64, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    20. Horn, Henrik & Persson, Lars, 2001. "Endogenous mergers in concentrated markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 1213-1244, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:isu:genres:1699. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Curtis Balmer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deiasus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.