This thesis presents three essays on the motives for mergers and the determinants of U.S. horizontal merger antitrust case selection. These essays contribute to the debate on whether mergers increase social welfare and on the efficiency of antitrust intervention. The first essay explores the market power motive for horizontal mergers by examining the relation between the announcement wealth effects to merging firms and their reliant corporate customers. Large sample studies generally conclude that efficiency considerations drive horizontal mergers and find little market power, which implies a non-negative wealth effect relation between these two parties along the supply chain. When I examine the endogenous stock market reactions to merger announcements with instrumentation, however, my results overturn this inference: I find that greater abnormal returns to merging firms systematically relate to lower abnormal returns to reliant customers. This wealth transfer effect exists for deals in industries with little foreign competition but not for deals in industries with intense foreign competition. These results suggest that increased market power is a key driver of horizontal mergers. In the second essay, I investigate the determinants of U.S. antitrust invention by examining horizontal merger antitrust case selection in the U.S. manufacturing sector during 1980-2009. I find no evidence supporting the consumer protection claim of the government's antitrust agencies. Instead, I find that the likelihood of antitrust intervention is negatively related to foreign import pressure. Hitting a market concentration hurdle criterion also predicts intervention. In addition, industry rivals seem able to exert pressure for antitrust intervention to avoid a competitive disadvantage. I identify two rival groups that account for the demand for antitrust regulation, local rivals and rivals producing less specialised products. The third essay examines the motives for related mergers from the perspective of product market similarity. Using Hoberg and Phillips' (2014) text-based product similarity measure, I find that when an acquirer's product is more similar to those of its rivals, a related merger results in a greater post-merger product price and lower market share for the combined firm. Moreover, for related mergers in more homogenous product markets, the stock market reactions to the merger announcement are higher for the combined firm and for product market rivals, but lower for reliant corporate customers. Overall, the evidence on both product market real performance and stock market reactions is consistent with the wealth transfer effect of related mergers, and suggests that the primary motive for firms to merge with product market competitors is to gain market power rather than to achieve efficiencies.

O Brasil se destaca entre os países que mais utilizou das medidas antidumping desde 1988. Modelos teóricos de comércio mais recentes como o de Melitz e Ottaviano (2008) apontam que mercados maiores e mais integrados elevam a produtividade e reduzem o poder de mercado das firmas. Assim, o presente estudo tem como objetivo avaliar o impacto das medidas antidumping sobre a produtividade e o poder de mercado das firmas industriais brasileiras, por meio de um modelo de diferença em diferenças para as variáveis de markup e produtividade total dos fatores. / Brazil stands out among the countries that have most used antidumping measures since 1988. Recent theoretical models of commerce such as Melitz e Ottaviano (2008) point out that larger and more integrated markets raise productivity and reduce the market power of firms. Thus, the present study aims to evaluate the impact of antidumping measures on the productivity and market power of Brazilian industrial firms, through a difference-in-difference model for the markup and total factor productivity variables.

A criação da Organização dos Países Exportadores de Petróleo (OPEP) foi um marco para o mercado internacional de petróleo. Para a opinião pública a OPEP é um cartel devido aos choques do petróleo ocorridos na década de 1970, porém na literatura econômica não existe consenso sobre a OPEP ser ou não um cartel. Sob a ótica da teoria dos cartéis, esta pesquisa tem como objetivo evidenciar o papel da OPEP e verificar se a mesma exerce poder de mercado, demonstrando aspectos históricos que desencadearam na sua criação e suas principais ações ao longo do tempo. No primeiro artigo, através de uma análise fundamentada na distinção entre os países da OPEP e os Não-OPEP, foram utilizados indicadores sobre o mercado internacional de petróleo, destacando os principais detentores das reservas provadas, os produtores, os consumidores, a evolução dos preços, o comércio internacional, as emissões de CO2 geradas a partir da combustão do combustível fóssil e a ascensão dos biocombustíveis. Os resultados mostraram que a dotação natural é fator determinante na produção e no comércio internacional de petróleo, e que os países membros da OPEP são altamente dependentes das divisas geradas das exportações de petróleo para sustentação de importações de outros bens. Verificou-se que os países da OPEP vêm aumentando seu consumo interno de petróleo, gerando maiores emissões de CO2, o que reforça ainda mais a dependência do petróleo como principal fonte na matriz energética destes países. Neste cenário, os biocombustíveis vêm ganhando espaço principalmente nos países Não-OPEP. A OPEP é uma Organização formada por países, assim seus objetivos vão além da maximização de lucros. Entretanto, as diferenças macroeconômicas entre os membros relacionadas aos diferentes regimes políticos, com objetivos destoantes de curto e de longo prazo, são fatores limitadores na ação coordenada entre os membros. No segundo artigo desta pesquisa, através do modelo estático da Nova Organização Industrial Empírica (New Empirical Industrial Organization - NEIO) foi identificado o grau de poder de mercado no comércio internacional de petróleo no período de janeiro de 2003 até março de 2015. Os resultados mostraram que o mercado internacional de petróleo está distante da estrutura de monopólio ou cartel perfeito, e não são estatisticamente descartadas as hipóteses de competição via Cournot e de competição perfeita. / The establishment of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was a historic milestone for the international oil market. For the public opinion the OPEC is considered as a cartel due to the oil shocks in the 1970s, but in the economic literature there is no consensus if OPEC really acts as cartel. However, we use the theory of cartels to highlight the role of OPEC and identify if there is market power exercise in the international oil market. We present historical aspects that led in OPEC creation and its main actions over time. In the first chapter, we use an analysis based on the distinction between the OPEC and non-OPEC countries. We identify the main countries which holds proven reserves, the major producers, consumers, the trend of price, the international trade, the CO2 emissions generated by the fossil fuel combustion and the rise of biofuels production. The results indicate that the natural endowment is a key factor to the production and international trade of oil, and OPEC members are highly dependent on oil exports revenue to sustain other goods imports. OPEC countries increased domestic oil consumption, generating more CO2 emissions, which demonstrates the increase of oil dependency in the energy matrix of these countries. According to the current scenario, the biofuels production has increased mainly in non-OPEC countries. OPEC is an organization formed by countries and their goals are not only to maximize profits, and so, OPEC is a political union that has stability over the years. However, macroeconomic differences among members related to different political regimes with different shortterm and long-term goals that are limiting factors for coordinated action. Therefore, according to the theory of the cartel formation and sustainability, OPEC has difficulties to fix prices or quantity on the international oil market, the Organization does not behave like a cartel most of the time. In the second chapter the static model of the New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) is used to identify the degree of market power in the international oil market during the period from January 2003 to March 2015. The results indicated that the international oil market is not characterized by a cartel, but are not statistically rejected the hypothesis of Cournot competition nor perfect competition.

This thesis consists of four self-contained papers related to the Nordic electricity market. Paper [I] examine how the reform of the Nordic electricity markets has affected competition in the electric power supply market, Nord Pool. The question is if the common power market has been competitive or if electric power generators have had market power during the period 1996 -2004. Moreover, since there was a stepwise evolution from national markets to a multinational power market, we also ask how the degree of market power has evolved during this integration process. The results show that electric power generators have had a small, but statistically significant, degree of market power during the whole period.  However, studying the integration effect, i.e. how the market power has been affected by additional countries joining Nord Pool, it show that the degree of market power has been reduced and finally vanished as the market has expanded and more countries joined the collaboration. Paper [II] analyse how the deregulation of the Swedish electricity market has affected the price of electric power and how the change in electric power price, in turn, has affected consumers’ welfare. The result shows that the change in pricing principle of electric power following the deregulation has increased consumer welfare over the period studied (1996-2006), with welfare gains about 100 SEK per customer per year, indicating a three per cent welfare gain for the average customer. Paper [III] study whether (and to what extent) the multinational electricity market integration has affected the price dynamics at the Nordic power exchange. The results shows that a larger electricity market seems to reduce the probability of sudden price jumps, but also that the effect on volatility seem to depend on the characteristics, i.e. production structure, of the integrated markets. In Paper [IV] a two-stage study is conducted to investigate the extent to which shocks in the demand and supply for electricity translate into price jumps, and the extent to which this process is affected by the prevailing market structure. The main findings from the study is that whether demand and supply shocks translate into price jumps largely depends on the prevailing market structure, i.e. on how far the market works from capacity constraints. A notable feature of the empirical analysis is also that the marginal effects from positive demand and negative supply shocks on the jump probabilities are mostly insignificant and of small magnitude.

In this dissertation, I investigate hub carriers' competitive advantage in directional markets within their hub and spoke networks. In the first chapter, I examine whether the competitive advantage of hub carriers in attracting hub-to-spoke passengers relative to spoke-to-hub passengers affects rivals' entry decisions in a symmetric way. The hub carrier advantage in attracting passengers at its concentrated hub airport creates an environment in which variation in the composition of demand in hub-to-spoke markets affects entry in a profoundly different way than demand variation in spoke-to-hub markets. In the second chapter, I examine hub carrier fares and price-cost margins in hub and spoke airport pairs. Exploiting variation across airport-pairs, I find that an increase in the proportion of business travelers in hub-to-spoke markets increases fares in these markets, while an increase in the proportion of business travelers in spoke-to-hub markets decreases fares. This result is consistent with the structural asymmetries found in the first chapter. However, the source of these concentration advantages remains ambiguous. These advantages could be due to cost benefits, demand effects, or market power. Exploiting the variation between hub-to-spoke and spoke-to-hub markets within airport pairs isolates the market power effect on fares. I find that difference in hub carrier airport shares explains most of the variation in its hub-to-spoke and spoke-to-hub price-cost margins. Unobserved quality and cost heterogeneity do not bias the result. In the final chapter we look at the relationship between market power and price discrimination. In the presence of price discrimination, at least one price does not equal marginal cost. Therefore, if price discrimination exists, there must be market power. While this logic is sound, it has led many policymakers to believe that price discrimination and market power are positively correlated. We present a model where measured price-discrimination can be low while market power is high and price discrimination can be high while market power is low, thus demonstrating that there is no theoretical connection between the strength of price discrimination and that of market power. We then present new evidence that price discrimination is negatively correlated with market power in the US airlines industry. / text

In three essays, the relationship between environmental regulation and firm behavior is explored. First, firms are found to influence the price in a regulatory market for emissions permits by exercising market power within their own price market. As the degree of market power in three high emitting industries increased, the price of NOx permits in Southern California’s RECLAIM permit increased as well. Second, the process of firm learning is explored. Power plants facing more stringent environmental regulation are found to learn from environmental regulation and experience efficiency gains. These gains are found to spillover to other power plants facing less stringent regulation through knowledge networks. Third, the decision of electricity firms to participate in reserve markets is modeled and simulated in order to measure the effect of increased wind power in the market on this decision. As the amount of wind power in the market increased, the expected capacity available in the market decreased, inviting the possibility of electricity shortages. However, the reduced variability in market outcomes when wind penetration increases suggests that policy makers may be better able to manipulate existing market mechanisms to induce investment in new capacity.

Market power mitigation has been an integral part of wholesale electricity markets since deregulation. In wholesale electricity markets, different regions in the US take different approaches to regulating market power. While the exercise of market power has received considerable attention in the literature, the issue of market power mitigation has attracted scant attention. In the first chapter, I examine the market power mitigation rules used in New York ISO (Independent System Operator) and California ISO (CAISO) with respect to day-ahead and real-time energy markets. I test whether markups associated with New York in-city generators would be lower with an alternative approach to mitigation, the CAISO approach. Results indicate the difference in markups between these two mitigation rules is driven by the shape of residual demand curves for suppliers. Analysis of residual demand curves faced by New York in-city suppliers show similar markups under both mitigation rules when no one supplier is necessary to meet the demand (i.e., when no supplier is pivotal). However, when some supplier is crucial for the market to clear, the mitigation rule adopted by the NYISO consistently leads to higher markups than would the CAISO rule. This result suggest that market power episodes in New York is confined to periods where some supplier is pivotal. As a result, I find that applying the CAISOs' mitigation rules to the New York market could lower wholesale electricity prices by 18%. The second chapter of my dissertation focuses on supply function equilibrium. In power markets, suppliers submit offer curves in auctions, indicating their willingness to supply at different price levels. Although firms are allowed to submit different offer curves for different time periods, surprisingly many firms stick to a single offer curve for the entire day. This essentially means that firms are submitting a single offer curve for multiple demand realizations. A suitable framework to analyze such oligopolistic competition between power market suppliers is supply function equilibrium models. Using detailed bidding data, I develop equilibrium in supply functions by restricting supplier offers to a class of supply functions. By collating equilibrium supply functions corresponding to different realizations of demand, I obtain a single optimal supply function for the entire day. Then I compare the resulting supply function with actual day-ahead offers in New York. In addition to supply function equilibrium, I also develop a conservative bidding approach in which each firm assumes that rivals bid at marginal costs. Results show that the supply functions derived from equilibrium bidding model in this paper is not consistent with actual bidding in New York. This result is mainly driven by the class of supply functions used in this study to generate the equilibrium. Further, actual offers do not resemble offers generated by the conservative bidding algorithm.

Concerns on market power conferred by airport dominance and the debates of hub premiums have attracted longstanding attention from governments and academics alike. Most previous studies mainly focus on the fully deregulated markets such as the United States and Europe, what remains unknown is how such effects change when a country evolves from a tightly controlled regime to a deregulated market. This research analyses the effects of airport dominance on airline pricing power with the empirical study based on the Chinese domestic market using fixed- effect panel data models. Results from the regression analysis indicate that airport dominance is the most important source of pricing power in the gradually deregulated Chinese domestic market. Hub carriers are able to charge higher prices to premium class passengers and non-hub carriers can benefit from the “umbrella effects” of hub premiums. However, hub carriers are not able to translate their airport dominance to pricing power in the economy class market, whereas non-hub carriers even have to reduce the prices as their market shares at major airports increase. This study contributes to the literature by explicitly segmenting the market into economy and premium classes. The results have important policy implications.

O Brasil se destaca entre os países que mais utilizou das medidas antidumping desde 1988. Modelos teóricos de comércio mais recentes como o de Melitz e Ottaviano (2008) apontam que mercados maiores e mais integrados elevam a produtividade e reduzem o poder de mercado das firmas. Assim, o presente estudo tem como objetivo avaliar o impacto das medidas antidumping sobre a produtividade e o poder de mercado das firmas industriais brasileiras, por meio de um modelo de diferença em diferenças para as variáveis de markup e produtividade total dos fatores. / Brazil stands out among the countries that have most used antidumping measures since 1988. Recent theoretical models of commerce such as Melitz e Ottaviano (2008) point out that larger and more integrated markets raise productivity and reduce the market power of firms. Thus, the present study aims to evaluate the impact of antidumping measures on the productivity and market power of Brazilian industrial firms, through a difference-in-difference model for the markup and total factor productivity variables.

The thesis is an ex-post assessment of two horizontal mergers motivated by the dearth in post-merger analyses in the South African context. The objective is to examine whether market dynamics have changed as stated by the Competition Tribunal. The main theories tested are whether the merged firm post-merger was able to exert market power unilaterally or in coordinated manner. These constructs are examined against the ability of customers to restrain market power, barriers to entry, the effect of the remedies imposed and the financial performance.The results reveal that the Tribunal leans towards the SCP doctrine and demonstrates the need for a dynamic approach in competitive assessments informed by understanding how competitors and customers may react to a merger. The research findings indicate that the Tribunal’s conclusions on both the Nampak/Burcap and Scaw/Ozz transactions were unproven, post-merger. The research also demonstrates the need and importance of ex-post evaluations to improve future decisions on mergers. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted