Seminar Shelving or Developing? Optimal Policy for Mergers with Potential Competitors Microeconomics seminar Add to calendar 2025-04-29 14:00 2025-04-29 15:15 Europe/Rome Shelving or Developing? Optimal Policy for Mergers with Potential Competitors Seminar Room 3rd Floor Villa La Fonte YYYY-MM-DD Print Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email When 29 April 2025 14:00 - 15:15 CEST Where Seminar Room 3rd Floor Villa La Fonte Organised by Department of Economics This seminar features a paper presentation by Chiara Fumagalli (Bocconi University). A start-up and an incumbent negotiate over an acquisition price. The acquisition may have anti-competitive effects (the suppression of a future competitor, and the possible shelving of the start-up's project) or pro-competitive ones (it may lead to the development of a project that would otherwise not reach the market, and may result in cost savings). We study the optimal merger policy for an antitrust authority that suffers from an information asymmetry relative to the merging parties, and show that it consists in committing to review transactions whose price is not low enough. We also propose empirical tests to identify high-price takeovers that are more likely to exert anti-competitive effects.Co-authors: M. Motta and E. Tarantino Scientific Organiser(s): Prof. Özlem Bedre-Defolie (EUI - Department of Economics) Prof. Giacomo Calzolari (European University Institute) Prof. Zeinab Aboutalebi (EUI - Department of Economics) Speaker(s): Prof. Chiara Fumagalli (Bocconi University)