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This study estimates the competitive effects of horizontal mergers in the French long-distance bus industry. We examine the two mergers that followed the 2015 Deregulation Act (the Macron Law); we use an exclusive and exhaustive dataset that covers eight consecutive quarters. We analyze the merger effects by comparing bus links that were affected by mergers with those that were unaffected; we use difference-in-differences estimations. We find that the two mergers are associated with price increases of about 13.5% immediately that then moderate to 5.3%; and with the frequency decreases from - 21.5 to - 25.7%; we observe no effects on load factors. These findings show evidence of short-run anticompetitive effects, while the mergers under study were not scrutinized by the French competition agency, as they were below the notification thresholds.

The duration of appellate court proceedings is an important determinant of the efficiency of a court system. We use data of 234 firm groups that participated in 63 cartels convicted by the European Commission between 2000 and 2012 to investigate the determinants of the duration of the subsequent one- or two-stage appeals process. We find that while the speed of the firststage appellate court decision depends on the court’s appeals-related workload, the complexity of the case, the degree of cooperation by the firms involved and the clarity of the applied rules and regulations, the second-stage appellate court proceedings appear to be largely unaffected by those drivers. We take our empirical results to derive conclusions for both firms that plan to file an appeal as well as public policy makers.

International audience; Theoretical research has investigated the relevance of entry-inducing effects as countervailing factor to a merger-related increase in market power.We use route level data for the America West Airlines-US Airways merger (2005) to investigate whether such an effect can be identified empirically. Our results show that both entry-inducing and entry-dissuading effects can be observed depending on the type of affected route and the carrier under investigation.