IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-21-00055.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Competitive effects of horizontal mergers with asymmetric firms

Author

Listed:
  • Cuong Hung Vuong

    (MRE and LabEx Entreprendre, University of Montpellier)

  • Edmond Baranes

    (MRE and LabEx Entreprendre, University of Montpellier)

Abstract

This paper aims at investigating the impacts of introducing cost asymmetry in horizontal merger analysis. In the absence of efficiency gains, previous literature states the negative competitive effects of a merger between symmetric firms. We go beyond the literature and show that the result is only likely to hold for a low level of asymmetry. In particular, we build a tractable model with three firms in which one of them has a different cost structure. After merging two symmetrical firms, the outsider always reduces (increases) price (investments), while the insiders choose the opposite strategies. In particular, if the outsider's cost is sufficiently low, the increase in its investment could outweigh the decreases in those of the merged entity, leading to higher total investments post-merger. Similarly, consumer surplus could be improved thanks to the decrease in the outsider's price.

Suggested Citation

  • Cuong Hung Vuong & Edmond Baranes, 2021. "Competitive effects of horizontal mergers with asymmetric firms," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(2), pages 734-740.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-21-00055
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2021/Volume41/EB-21-V41-I2-P66.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Lefouili, Yassine & Madio, Leonardo, 2023. "Market Structure and Investments : A Progress Report," TSE Working Papers 23-1491, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Sep 2024.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Horizontal merger; Cost-reducing; Innovation; Competition; Investment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L4 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies
    • L5 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-21-00055. 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.