IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bon/boncrc/crctr224_2020_208.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Removal of Potential Competitors – A Blind Spot of Merger Policy?

Author

Listed:
  • Massimo Motta
  • Martin Peitz

Abstract

In dynamic industries, firms often face new competitive threats. If firms are able to identify those threats early on, they may simply acquire potential competitors under the radar of competition authorities. Merger policy thus has to deal with two issues: (1) how to make sure that potentially problematic mergers are notified and investigated; and (2) how to assess the social costs and benefits of such mergers. The latter requires to take a stance regarding the standard and burden of proof. We argue for a reversal of burden of proof, at least if one of the merging firms is considered to be a “systemic firm”.

Suggested Citation

  • Massimo Motta & Martin Peitz, 2020. "Removal of Potential Competitors – A Blind Spot of Merger Policy?," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2020_208, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2020_208
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp208
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Iñigo Herguera, 2021. "Competencia y regulación de (algunas) plataformas digitales en la UE," Working Papers 2021-10, FEDEA.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Merger policy; potential competitor; notification; standard of proof; burden of proof; killer acquisition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices

    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:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2020_208. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CRC Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.crctr224.de .

    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.