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Here below you find the most read articles over the last week.

New York Times

AT&T vs. Disney: How the Trump Administration May View 2 Mega-Mergers

The Justice Department has sued to block the AT&T-Time Warner deal, but has so far remained silent on the Disney-Fox deal. Here is what the government is weighing on the antitrust front. Read More.

POLITICO

Vestager ramps up pressure on Bayer-Monsanto mega-merger

The European Commission issued formal objections Friday to Bayer’s planned $66 billion takeover of Monsanto, according to two people briefed on the case, signaling the deal may be blocked unless the German company makes more significant concessions. The objections from Brussels... Read More.

ACCC

ACCC to oppose BP's acquisition of Woolworths service stations

The ACCC has announced today that it intends to oppose the proposed acquisition by B P Australia Pty Ltd of Woolworths Limited’s (ASX:WOW) network of retail service station sites. Woolworths currently operates 531 sites and has 12 sites in development. BP supplies fuel to approximately 1,400 BP-branded service stations throughout Australia, setting fuel prices at roughly 350 of them. Read More.

HBR

What Small Businesses Stand to Lose in a Net Neutrality Rollback

Deep in the golden corn fields of Iowa, technology is transforming life on the farm. For decades, the production of corn has been led by family-based businesses who operate their farms with a time-tested mix of traditional agriculture tools. But now many of them have added something new to their arsenal: a mobile app called FarmLogs. Read More.

Truth on the Marke

The destiny of telecom regulation is antitrust

This week the FCC will vote on Chairman Ajit Pai’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order. Read More.

Disruptive Competition Project

How to Build a Better Antitrust Policy

Herbert Hovenkamp speaks about his latest research, which builds a compelling defense for antitrust policies that advocate protecting consumers over businesses. Read More.

Chillin'Competition

Horizontal Mergers, Innovation and the Competitive Process

Giulio Federico
Recent merger decisions by competition authorities have revived the debate on the relationship between competition and innovation. This article reviews this issue by drawing on the relevant economic literature, and by placing it in the broader policy debate on the benefits of competitive markets. Read More.

Review of Industrial Organization

Ex-post Evaluation of Mergers in the Supermarket Industry

Tiago PiresAndré & Trindade
In this paper we quantify the effects of horizontal mergers in the supermarket sector that took place in the US between 2003 and 2005. Our results indicate no effect on the average prices, but that total product variety in a store goes up by more than 3% following a merger. We find that the increase in variety after a merger is driven by stores that are not directly involved in the events, for whom the increase is larger than 4%. Read More.

Working Paper

Recapture Ratios in Merger Analysis

Serge Moresi & Hans Zenger
Most quantitative tools for assessing potential competitive effects of mergers (e.g., upward pricing pressure indices and merger simulation models) rely heavily on recapture ratios. We show how recapture ratios can be approximated using simple microeconomic relationships and commonly-used parameters — namely, the products’ sales, profit margins, and group elasticity of demand. Read More.

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