Arbeitspapier

An empirical assessment of the 2004 EU merger policy reform

Based on a database of 326 merger cases scrutinized by the European Commission between 1990 and 2007, we evaluate the economic impact of the change in European merger legislation in 2004. We first propose a general framework to assess merger policy effectiveness, which is based on standard oligopoly theory and makes use of stock market reactions as an external assessment of the merger and the merger control decisions. We then focus on four different dimensions of effectiveness: 1) legal certainty; 2) frequency and determinants of type I and type II errors; 3) rent-reversion achieved by different merger policy tools; and 4) deterrence of anti-competitive mergers. To infer the economic impact of the merger policy reform, we compare the results of our four tests before and after its introduction. Our results suggest that the policy reform seems to have been only a modest improvement of European merger policy.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: WZB Discussion Paper ; No. SP II 2010-16

Classification
Wirtschaft
Antitrust Law
Estimation: General
Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
Subject
merger control
regulatory reform
EU Commission
event-study

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Duso, Tomaso
Gugler, Klaus
Szücs, Florian
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB)
(where)
Berlin
(when)
2010

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Duso, Tomaso
  • Gugler, Klaus
  • Szücs, Florian
  • Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB)

Time of origin

  • 2010

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