25 Years of European Merger Control

55 Pages Posted: 5 Apr 2019

See all articles by Pauline Affeldt

Pauline Affeldt

E.CA Economics

Tomaso Duso

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin); TU Berlin- Faculty of Economics and Management - Empirical Industrial Organization; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Florian Szücs

Vienna University of Economics and Business

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: April 2019

Abstract

We study the evolution of the EC’s merger decision procedure over the first 25 years of European competition policy. Using a novel dataset constructed at the level of the relevant markets and containing all merger cases over the 1990-2014 period, we evaluate how consistently arguments related to structural market parameters were applied over time. Using non-parametric machine learning techniques, we find that the importance of market shares and concentration measures has declined while the importance of barriers to entry and the risk of foreclosure has increased in the EC’s merger assessment following the 2004 merger policy reform.

Keywords: merger policy, DG competition, causal forests

JEL Classification: K21,L40

Suggested Citation

Affeldt, Pauline and Duso, Tomaso and Szücs, Florian, 25 Years of European Merger Control (April 2019). DIW Berlin Discussion Paper No. 1797 (2019), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3366915 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3366915

Pauline Affeldt

E.CA Economics ( email )

Schlossplatz 1
Berlin, 10178
Germany

Tomaso Duso (Contact Author)

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) ( email )

Mohrenstraße 58
Berlin, 10117
Germany

TU Berlin- Faculty of Economics and Management - Empirical Industrial Organization ( email )

Berlin, 10585
Germany

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

Florian Szücs

Vienna University of Economics and Business ( email )

Welthandelsplatz 1
Vienna, Wien 1020
Austria

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