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A Short Overview of a Methodology for the Ex-Post Review of Merger Control Decisions

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This paper is based on a study commissioned by the European Commission, in which we proposed a detailed methodological approach for the ex-post assessment of decisions reached by the European Commission in the field of merger control. The methodology focuses on how to establish whether the market structure arising from the decision is apt to protect consumer welfare better than the market structures that could have arisen from alternative decisions. It provides suggestions on how assess the impact of the decision relative to the possible counterfactuals and discusses the empirical techniques that can be used to perform this evaluation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LEAR – Laboratorio di Economia, Antitrust e Regolamentazione, Via del Banco di S. Spirito 42, 00184, Rome, Italy

    Paolo Buccirossi, Lorenzo Ciari & Cristiana Vitale

  2. Humboldt University Berlin and Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Reichpietschufer 50, 10785, Berlin, Germany

    Tomaso Duso

  3. Research Institute of Industrial Economics – IFN, Grevgatan 34, 102 15, Stockholm, Sweden

    Sven-Olof Fridolfsson

  4. Department of Economics and Institutions, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Building B, 3rd Floor, Room no. 33, Via Columbia 2, 00133, Rome, Italy

    Giancarlo Spagnolo

Authors
  1. Paolo Buccirossi
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  2. Lorenzo Ciari
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  3. Tomaso Duso
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  4. Sven-Olof Fridolfsson
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  5. Giancarlo Spagnolo
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  6. Cristiana Vitale
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paolo Buccirossi.

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Buccirossi, P., Ciari, L., Duso, T. et al. A Short Overview of a Methodology for the Ex-Post Review of Merger Control Decisions. De Economist 156, 453–475 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10645-008-9104-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10645-008-9104-3

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