IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9600.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Antitrust Merger Policy: Lessons from the Australian Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Philip L. Williams
  • Graeme Woodbridge

Abstract

A study of the operation of Australia's merger policy over the last twenty-seven years can yield lessons for countries that are contemplating the introduction of their own merger policy. If it is to be used to enhance value, merger policy should provide that any possible increase in monopoly power be weighed against any increases in efficiency. The process by which this is achieved should be undertaken with speed and secrecy so as not to deter efficiency-enhancing mergers. The twin requirements of speed and secrecy will, in turn, present problems in achieving fair process and the creation of precedent.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip L. Williams & Graeme Woodbridge, 2003. "Antitrust Merger Policy: Lessons from the Australian Experience," NBER Working Papers 9600, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9600
    Note: CF
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9600.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Green, Edward J & Porter, Robert H, 1984. "Noncooperative Collusion under Imperfect Price Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 87-100, January.
    2. Schwert, G. William, 1996. "Markup pricing in mergers and acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 153-192, June.
    3. Cowling, Keith & Waterson, Michael, 1976. "Price-Cost Margins and Market Structure," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 43(171), pages 267-274, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. M. Idrees Khawaja & Musleh-Ud Din, 2007. "Determinants of Interest Spread in Pakistan," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 46(2), pages 129-143.

    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. Philip L. Williams & Graeme Woodbridge, 2004. "Antitrust Merger Policy: Lessons from the Australian Experience," NBER Chapters, in: Governance, Regulation, and Privatization in the Asia-Pacific Region, pages 35-66, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Arnab Bhattacharjee & Sumit K. Majumdar, 2011. "How much does industry matter in an emerging market economy?," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 256, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    3. Marcos Lima & Marcelo Resende, 2004. "Profit margins and business cycles in the Brazilian industry: a panel data study," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(9), pages 923-930.
    4. Akbar Ullah & Ejaz Ghani & Attiya Javed, 2013. "Market Power and Industrial Performance in Pakistan," Working Papers id:5334, eSocialSciences.
    5. Korner, Julia & Weiss, Christoph R., 2001. "Die Zyklik der Profite in der Ernährungswirtschaft: Ein internationaler Vergleich," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 50(03), pages 1-5.
    6. Sabine Bockem, 2004. "Cartel formation and oligopoly structure: a new assessment of the crude oil market," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(12), pages 1355-1369.
    7. Warren, Paul, 2005. "Rentabilité des entreprises sous contrôle canadien par rapport aux entreprises sous contrôle américain," Série de documents de recherche sur l'analyse économique (AE) 2005030f, Statistics Canada, Direction des études analytiques.
    8. Warren, Paul, 2005. "Profitability of Canadian- Versus U.S.-controlled Enterprises," Economic Analysis (EA) Research Paper Series 2005030e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    9. Ian Small, 1997. "The cyclicality of Mark-ups and Profit Margins: Some Evidence for Manufacturing and Services," Bank of England working papers 72, Bank of England.
    10. Janvier D. Nkurunziza, 2005. "Reputation and Credit without Collateral in Africa`s Formal Banking," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2005-02, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    11. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    12. Fu, Fangjian & Lin, Leming & Officer, Micah S., 2013. "Acquisitions driven by stock overvaluation: Are they good deals?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 24-39.
    13. Barbara M. Roberts, "undated". "Transition and Changes in Industrial Concentration in Poland," Discussion Papers in European Economics 98/4, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    14. Abito, Jose Miguel & Chen, Cuicui, 2023. "A partial identification framework for dynamic games," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    15. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr., 2004. "Cartel Pricing Dynamics in the Presence of an Antitrust Authority," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(4), pages 651-673, Winter.
    16. Juan-José Ganuza & Jos Jansen, 2013. "Too Much Information Sharing? Welfare Effects of Sharing Acquired Cost Information in Oligopoly," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 845-876, December.
    17. Wen-Shiung Lee, 2013. "Merger and acquisition evaluation and decision making model," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(15-16), pages 1473-1494, December.
    18. Bagwell, Kyle & Wolinsky, Asher, 2002. "Game theory and industrial organization," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 49, pages 1851-1895, Elsevier.
    19. Patty Bick & Matthew D. Crook & Andrew A. Lynch & Brian R. Walkup, 2017. "Does Distance Matter In Mergers And Acquisitions?," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 40(1), pages 33-54, March.
    20. Ronchi, Loraine, 2006. "Fairtrade and market failures in agricultural commodity markets," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4011, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L4 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:9600. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.