Both in the US and in Europe, antitrust authorities prohibit merger not only if the merged entity, in and of itself, is no longer sufficiently controlled by competition. The authorities also intervene if, post merger, the market structure has changed such that "tacit collusion" becomes disturbingly more likely. It seems that antitrust neglects the fact that, for more than 50 years, economists have been doing experiments on this very question. Almost any conceivable determinant of higher or lower collusion has been tested. This paper standardises the evidence by way of a meta-study, and relates experimental findings as closely as possible to antitrust doctrine.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Ivaldi, Marc & Jullien, Bruno & Rey, Patrick & Seabright, Paul & Tirole, Jean, 2003.
"The Economics of Tacit Collusion,"
IDEI Working Papers
186, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
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