Good morning,

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

New York Times

Streaming Soon: A Fight Over AT&T, Time Warner, and the Future of TV

WASHINGTON — How you watch “Game of Thrones” and CNN is about to have its day in court. The Justice Department’s bid to block AT&T’s $85 billion merger with Time Warner is set to head to trial next week, in one of the most anticipated antitrust battles in years. Read More.

BBC

Amazon Japan offices raided in competition probe

Amazon Japan said its offices have been raided by the country's fair trade regulator on suspicion of anti-trust violations. The online retailer is suspected of asking suppliers to shoulder costs incurred for selling their products at a discount, according to media reports. Read More.

REUTERS

South Africa antitrust watchdog charges Takata with price fixing

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African competition watchdog charged Takata Corp with price fixing on Wednesday, another blow to the Japanese auto safety products maker in the throes of a massive airbag scandal. Read More.

Chillin'Competition

Is the Guidance Paper on Article 102 binding on the European Commission?

A few posts ago (here) Pablo challenged me to explain my view on the binding force of the Guidance paper on Art. 102. The answer is crystal clear in my mind (and Pablo already anticipated the answer years ago labelling it as a “pre-commitment device”), but I have never seen the debate spelt out in full, nor have I seen what I think is the killer argument. Read More.

LEX

Rage against the Machine! CMA sets up a new on data unit to investigate online anti-competitive behaviour

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced that it will establish a new data unit this summer in order to enhance its ability to investigate the enforcement of digital competition law issues including the use of algorithms, Big Data and machine learning. Read More.

International Journal of Industrial Organization

Horizontal Mergers and Product Innovation

Giulio Federico, Gregor Langus, Tommaso Valletti
We set up a stylized oligopoly model of uncertain product innovation to analyze the effects of a merger on innovation incentives and on consumer surplus. The model incorporates two competitive channels for merger effects: the “price coordination” channel and the internalization of the “innovation externality”. In our numerical analysis both overall innovation and consumer welfare fall after a merger. Read More.

Journal of European Competition Law & Practice

Should Profit Margins Play a More Decisive Role in Horizontal Merger Control?

Jorge Padilla
In a recent speech,1 DG Competition’s Chief Competition Economist, Prof Tommaso Valletti explained that, while there is no evidence of increased market concentration in the five largest European countries (EU-5), profit margins have increased since 2010, reaching a historical maximum in 2016... Read More.

U of Penn, Inst for Law & Econ Research Paper No. 18-3

Prophylactic Merger Policy

Herbert Hovenkamp
One important purpose of the antitrust merger law is to arrest certain anticompetitive practices or outcomes in their “incipiency.” Many Clayton Act decisions involving both mergers and other practices had recognized the idea as early as the 1920s. Read More.

Visit CompetitionFeed and read more.

Best wishes, CompetitionFeed Team
E-mail: valur@competitionfeed.com

About CompetitionFeed
By aggregating material from over 300 sources and using human and artificial intelligence to pick out the most important articles, CompetitionFeed provides an effective way to monitor all this information. That would be impossible for any single person.

Events and Jobs
Looking for a job or an interesting event to attend? Visit ComptitionFeed.com.