TAILORED SOLUTIONS IN ECONOMICS Ex-post Assessment of Merger Control Decisions in Digital Markets Final report Document prepared by Lear for the Competition and Markets Authority 9 May 2019 Lear Via di Monserrato, 48 00186 – Rome tel. +39 06 68 300 530 e-mail:
[email protected] web: www.learlab.com AUTHORS Elena Argentesi, Lear and University of Bologna Paolo Buccirossi, Lear Emilio Calvano*, University of Bologna and Toulouse School of Economics Tomaso Duso, Lear, Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin), TU Berlin, CEPR, and CESifo Alessia Marrazzo, Lear Salvatore Nava, Lear OTHER CONTRIBUTORS Elena Salomone, Lear Anna Violini, Lear ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to thank the team at the Competition and Markets Authority for their assistance and guidance over the course of this study, including in particular Francesca Botti, Alistair Love and Tom Kitchen. Finally, we would like to thank Daniele Michele Ferrari (Lear) for his valuable research assistance. * Emilio Calvano was not involved in the assessment of the Facebook/Instagram merger. Lear – www.learlab.com Index Executive summary ....................................................................................................................... i Recommendations ..................................................................................................................... xiv PART I. General lessons for merger control in digital markets ........................................................ 1 I.1. Introduction and methodology for Part I ........................................................................................2