Is European M&A Regulation Protectionist?

Nihat Aktas, Eric de Bodt and Richard Roll

Economic Journal, 2007, vol. 117, issue 522, 1096-1121

Abstract: Why do regulatory authorities scrutinise mergers and acquisitions? The authorities themselves claim to be combating monopoly power and protecting consumers. But the last two decades of empirical research has found little supporting evidence for such motives. An alternative is that M&A regulation is actually designed to protect privileged firms. We provide a test of protectionism by studying whether European regulatory intervention is more likely when European firms are harmed by increased competition. Our findings raise a suspicion of protectionist motivations by the European regulator during the 1990s. The results are robust to many statistical difficulties, including endogeneity between investor valuations and regulatory actions. Copyright 2007 The Author(s). Journal compilation Royal Economic Society 2007.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecj:econjl:v:117:y:2007:i:522:p:1096-1121

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... al.asp?ref=0013-0133

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Journal is currently edited by Martin Cripps, Steve Machin, Woulter den Haan, Andrea Galeotti, Rachel Griffith and Frederic Vermeulen

More articles in Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing () and Christopher F. Baum ().