Merger Policy in Digital Markets: an Ex Post Assessment 3 Study Is to Undertake a Less Common Form of Ex Post Assessment
Journal of Competition Law & Economics, 00(00), 1–46 doi: 10.1093/joclec/nhaa020 MERGER POLICY IN DIGITAL MARKETS: AN EX Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jcle/advance-article/doi/10.1093/joclec/nhaa020/5874037 by guest on 18 December 2020 POST ASSESSMENT† Elena Argentesi,∗Paolo Buccirossi,†Emilio Calvano,‡ Tomaso Duso,§,∗ & Alessia Marrazzo,¶ & Salvatore Nava† ABSTRACT This paper presents a broad retrospective evaluation of mergers and merger decisions in markets dominated by multisided digital platforms. First, we doc- ument almost 300 acquisitions carried out by three major tech companies— Amazon, Facebook, and Google—between 2008 and 2018. We cluster target companies on their area of economic activity providing suggestive evidence on the strategies behind these mergers. Second, we discuss the features of digital markets that create new challenges for competition policy. By using relevant case studies as illustrative examples, we discuss theories of harm that have been used or, alternatively, could have been formulated by authorities in these cases. Finally, we retrospectively examine two important merger cases, Facebook/Instagram and Google/Waze, providing a systematic assessment of the theories of harm considered by the UK competition authorities as well as evidence on the evolution of the market after the transactions were approved. We discuss whether the competition authority performed complete and careful analyses to foresee the competitive consequences of the investigated mergers and whether a more effective merger control regime can be achieved within the current legal framework. JEL codes: L4; K21 ∗ Department of Economics, University of Bologna † Lear, Rome ‡ Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Toulouse School of Economics and CEPR, London § Deutsches Institut fuer Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin), Department of Economics, Tech- nical University (TU) Berlin, CEPR, London and CESifo, Munich ¶ Lear, Rome and Department of Economics, University of Bologna ∗ Corresponding author.
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