IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

Competition effects of mergers: An event study of the German electricity market

Author Info

  • Keller, Andreas

Abstract

This paper investigates the competition effects of the entry of Vattenfall into the German electricity market. While the competition authorities supported the entry by approving Vattenfall's acquisition of three regional utilities, other market participants raised concerns over the emergence of an upcoming oligopoly in the German market for power generation. We contrast the efficiency hypothesis postulating pro-competitive effects of mergers with the market power hypothesis postulating anti-competitive effects. For the analysis of the two opposing hypotheses, we use an event study approach to the stock prices of Vattenfall's competitors in the German market. While we find no empirical evidence for increased market power in the German electricity market due to Vattenfall's mergers, there is some indication for efficiency increases. We therefore cannot oppose the view of the competition authorities predicting an overall positive effect for consumers as a result of Vattenfall's entry into the German electricity market.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(10)00405-2
Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Energy Policy.

Volume (Year): 38 (2010)
Issue (Month): 9 (September)
Pages: 5264-5271

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:9:p:5264-5271
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol

Keywords: Electricity market Event study Horizontal merger;

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.:

as in new window
  1. Fridolfsson, Sven-Olof & Stennek, Johan, 2006. "Industry Concentration and Welfare - On the Use of Stock Market Evidence from Horizontal Mergers," CEPR Discussion Papers 5977, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Weigt, Hannes & Hirschhausen, Christian von, 2008. "Price formation and market power in the German wholesale electricity market in 2006," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(11), pages 4227-4234, November.
  3. LeRoy, Stephen F, 1989. "Efficient Capital Markets and Martingales," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 27(4), pages 1583-1621, December.
  4. McAfee, R. Preston & Williams, Michael A., 1988. "Can event studies detect anticompetitive mergers?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 199-203.
  5. Farrell, Joseph & Shapiro, Carl, 1988. "Horizontal Mergers: An Equilibrium Analysis," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt0tp305nx, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
  6. Duso, Tomaso & Neven, Damien J & Röller, Lars-Hendrik, 2003. "The Political Economy of European Merger Control: Evidence Using Stock Market Data," CEPR Discussion Papers 3880, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  7. Willems, Bert & Rumiantseva, I. & Weigt, H., 2007. "Cournot Versus Supply Functions : What does the Data Tell us?," Discussion Paper 2007-63, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
  8. Joseph A. Clougherty & Tomaso Duso, 2008. "The Impact of Horizontal Mergers on Rivals: Gains to Being Left Outside a Merger," CIG Working Papers SP II 2008-17r, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG), revised Feb 2009.
  9. Eckbo, B. Espen, 1983. "Horizontal mergers, collusion, and stockholder wealth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1-4), pages 241-273, April.
  10. Stillman, Robert, 1983. "Examining antitrust policy towards horizontal mergers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1-4), pages 225-240, April.
  11. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
  12. Paul A. Samuelson, 1973. "Proof That Properly Discounted Present Values of Assets Vibrate Randomly," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 4(2), pages 369-374, Autumn.
  13. Ramos-Real, Francisco Javier, 2005. "Cost functions and the electric utility industry. A contribution to the debate on deregulation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 69-87, January.
  14. Nihat Aktas & Eric de Bodt & Richard Roll, 2007. "Is European M&A Regulation Protectionist?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(522), pages 1096-1121, 07.
  15. Oberndorfer, Ulrich, 2009. "EU Emission Allowances and the stock market: Evidence from the electricity industry," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(4), pages 1116-1126, February.
  16. Brunekreeft, Gert & Keller, Katja, 2000. "The electricity supply industry in Germany: market power or power of the market?," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 15-29, March.
  17. Christensen, Laurits R & Greene, William H, 1976. "Economies of Scale in U.S. Electric Power Generation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(4), pages 655-76, August.
  18. Eckbo, B Espen & Wier, Peggy, 1985. "Antimerger Policy under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act: A Reexamination of the Market Power Hypothesis," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 119-49, April.
  19. A. Craig MacKinlay, 1997. "Event Studies in Economics and Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(1), pages 13-39, March.
  20. Ventosa, Mariano & Baillo, Alvaro & Ramos, Andres & Rivier, Michel, 2005. "Electricity market modeling trends," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(7), pages 897-913, May.
  21. repec:cdl:ucsbec:13-89 is not listed on IDEAS
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as in new window


Cited by:

  1. Kamiński, Jacek, 2014. "A blocked takeover in the Polish power sector: A model-based analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 42-52.
  2. Pompei, Fabrizio, 2013. "Heterogeneous effects of regulation on the efficiency of the electricity industry across European Union countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 569-585.
  3. Yoo, Kyungjin & Lee, Youah & Heo, Eunnyeong, 2013. "Economic effects by merger and acquisition types in the renewable energy sector: An event study approach," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 694-701.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:9:p:5264-5271. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Shamier, Wendy)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.