Topic Industry

Merger Policy in Digital Markets: An Ex-Post Assessment

This paper presents a broad retrospective evaluation of mergers and merger decisions in markets dominated by multisided digital platforms. First, we document almost 300 acquisitions carried out by three major tech companies—Amazon, Facebook, and Google—between 2008 and 2018. We cluster target companies on their area of economic activity providing suggestive evidence on the strategies behind these mergers. ...

Competitors’ Reactions to Big Tech Acquisitions: Evidence from Mobile Apps

Since 2010, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM) have acquired more than 400 companies. Competition authorities did not scrutinize most of these transactions and blocked none. This raised concerns that GAFAM acquisitions target potential competitors yet fly under the radar of current merger control due to the features of the digital economy. We empirically study the competitive effects ...

Setting Priorities, Pooling Resources and Accelerating Transformation: New Approaches in Industrial and Technology Policy

Support study for the revision of the EU guidelines on state aid for environmental protection and energy (EEAG)

The European Commission (DG Competition) commissioned an international consortium of DIW Berlin together with E.CA Economics, LEAR, University of East Anglia and Sheppard Mullin with a background study on State aid in the field of environmental protection and energy. The results of the study will support the Commission in the revision of the EU Guidelines on State aid for environmental protection...

US and EU secure vaccine production on home soil

The deployment of a safe and effective vaccine for Covid-19 will be central to lifting containment measures. In a bid to speed up vaccine deployment, governments are entering into ‘Advance Purchase Agreements’ (APAs) with vaccine companies to secure access to vaccine doses. We document and compare the vaccine procurement strategies of the US and the EU. Most notably, we find that both...

DG Competition of the European Commission publishes several studies evaluating State aid rules provided by a consortium with the participation of the DIW Berlin

On 2 June 2020 DG Competition of the European Commission published several support studies on the retrospective evaluation of State aid rules. This “Fitness check” will serve as a basis for future Commission’s decisions about whether to further prolong or update the rules expiring in 2020. The consortium of DIW Berlin, Lear, Sheppard Mullin and UEA Consulting under the leadership ...

The CoRisk-Index: A data-mining approach to identify industry-specific risk assessments related to COVID-19 in real-time

This event takes place online via Zoom. Abstract:  While the coronavirus spreads around the world, governments are attempting to reduce contagion rates at the expense of negative economic effects. Market expectations have plummeted, foreshadowing the risk of a global economic crisis and mass unemployment. Governments provide huge financial aid programmes to mitigate the expected economic...

Market Concentration in Europe: Evidence based on Antitrust Markets (cancelled)

Abstract:  An increasing body of empirical evidence has documented trends to risen concentration, profits, markups, and market power in many industries across the world since the 1980s. Several factors – such as globalisation, digitisation, the increased role of intangible assets and sunk costs, as well as M&A activity and the (under)enforcement of merger control– have been...

Diversification, Common Ownership, and Strategic Incentives

We argue that within-industry investor diversification is directly related to common ownership incentives (profit loads on rival firms by the manager of a firm) in product markets. Because of their respective investment strategies, passive investors are naturally more diversified than active investors. If more money flows from active toward passive investors, then common ownership incentives increase. ...

Industry Conversion Tables for German Firm-Level Data