This paper analyzes the behavior of the Argentine hamburger market during the period 2013-2018, to see if an important merger that occurred by the end of 2015 (the BRF/MRP merger) had any discernable market-power or efficiency effects. To do this, we run an econometric demand-and-supply model, and we find that there is an appreciable cost reduction that more than counterbalances the price increases induced by the merger. This implies that total consumers’ surplus may have grown as a consequence of the merger.
{"title":"The Effect of Horizontal Mergers on Efficiency and Market Power: An Application to the Argentine Hamburger Market","authors":"Germán Colomá","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3501187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3501187","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes the behavior of the Argentine hamburger market during the period 2013-2018, to see if an important merger that occurred by the end of 2015 (the BRF/MRP merger) had any discernable market-power or efficiency effects. To do this, we run an econometric demand-and-supply model, and we find that there is an appreciable cost reduction that more than counterbalances the price increases induced by the merger. This implies that total consumers’ surplus may have grown as a consequence of the merger.","PeriodicalId":430354,"journal":{"name":"IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128219263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates how increases in concentration can be interrupted or reversed by changes in how firms compete on quality. We examine the U.S. hotel industry during the past half century. We document that starting in the early 1980s, quality competition came more in the form of costs that vary with hotel size, and less in the form of costs that are fixed with hotel size, particularly for business travelers. We then show that, consistent with Sutton (1991), industry structure has evolved differently since then in areas that are business travel versus personal travel destinations. Demand increases have been associated with more, but smaller, hotels in business travel destinations. In contrast, the growth in the number of hotels is much smaller, and the growth in average hotel size is much greater, in personal travel destinations. We provide evidence that this change reflects the emergence of two new classes of hotels – limited service and all-suites hotels – that did not exist before the early 1980s. These entrants – many of which had high quality rooms but which had limited out-of-room amenities – had a narrower competitive impact on other hotels than did the entrants of the 1960s and 1970s, which competed more on out-of-the-room amenities, and this led the industry structure to evolve differently.
{"title":"Industry Structure, Segmentation, and Competition in the U.S. Hotel Industry","authors":"R. Butters, T. Hubbard","doi":"10.3386/w26579","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/w26579","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates how increases in concentration can be interrupted or reversed by changes in how firms compete on quality. We examine the U.S. hotel industry during the past half century. We document that starting in the early 1980s, quality competition came more in the form of costs that vary with hotel size, and less in the form of costs that are fixed with hotel size, particularly for business travelers. We then show that, consistent with Sutton (1991), industry structure has evolved differently since then in areas that are business travel versus personal travel destinations. Demand increases have been associated with more, but smaller, hotels in business travel destinations. In contrast, the growth in the number of hotels is much smaller, and the growth in average hotel size is much greater, in personal travel destinations. We provide evidence that this change reflects the emergence of two new classes of hotels – limited service and all-suites hotels – that did not exist before the early 1980s. These entrants – many of which had high quality rooms but which had limited out-of-room amenities – had a narrower competitive impact on other hotels than did the entrants of the 1960s and 1970s, which competed more on out-of-the-room amenities, and this led the industry structure to evolve differently.","PeriodicalId":430354,"journal":{"name":"IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets eJournal","volume":"114 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132211459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper presents a set of results concerning price formation and convergence to perfect competition in markets populated by sellers of differentiated products. It generalizes results of Butters (1977), Hart (1979), Perloff and Salop (1985), Wolinsky (1986), Armstrong et al. (2009), and Moraga-Gonzalez et al. (2017) by studying an environment with differentiated goods and asymmetric information, where buyers have access to different sellers with varying probability (some sellers have a larger “consumer base” than others) and different buyers are matched with a different numbers of sellers. I show that as frictions of trading vanish the equilibrium converges to perfect competition.
{"title":"Vanishing Market Power","authors":"Rafael R. Guthmann","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3312440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3312440","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents a set of results concerning price formation and convergence to perfect competition in markets populated by sellers of differentiated products. It generalizes results of Butters (1977), Hart (1979), Perloff and Salop (1985), Wolinsky (1986), Armstrong et al. (2009), and Moraga-Gonzalez et al. (2017) by studying an environment with differentiated goods and asymmetric information, where buyers have access to different sellers with varying probability (some sellers have a larger “consumer base” than others) and different buyers are matched with a different numbers of sellers. I show that as frictions of trading vanish the equilibrium converges to perfect competition.","PeriodicalId":430354,"journal":{"name":"IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets eJournal","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126505687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper analyzed the relationship between firm characteristics and credit constraints among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Philippines. In particular, we determined whether an SME’s firm characteristics are correlated to the predicted probability of being credit-constrained or “quasi-constrained” — i.e. able to borrow from informal sources. Estimates of marginal effects at the means (MEMs) from logistic regressions provide some suggestive evidence that firm size, previous purchase of fixed assets, and increased use of digital technologies for accounting and financial management are associated with a lower predicted probability of being credit-constrained for the average SME in our sample. However, with the exception of digital technology use, these firm characteristics are not significant in predicting the probability that the average SME is quasi-constrained. This implies that the firm characteristics that are significant in accessing finance solely through formal channels may not be significant when considering informal sources. We also found that the increased adoption of digital technologies has an inverse association with the predicted probability of being credit-constrained and quasi-constrained for the average SME in our sample, although our analysis did not establish the direction of causality.
{"title":"Firm Characteristics and Credit Constraints across SMEs in the Philippines","authors":"J. P. Flaminiano, J. P. Francisco","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3498019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3498019","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzed the relationship between firm characteristics and credit constraints among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Philippines. In particular, we determined whether an SME’s firm characteristics are correlated to the predicted probability of being credit-constrained or “quasi-constrained” — i.e. able to borrow from informal sources. Estimates of marginal effects at the means (MEMs) from logistic regressions provide some suggestive evidence that firm size, previous purchase of fixed assets, and increased use of digital technologies for accounting and financial management are associated with a lower predicted probability of being credit-constrained for the average SME in our sample. However, with the exception of digital technology use, these firm characteristics are not significant in predicting the probability that the average SME is quasi-constrained. This implies that the firm characteristics that are significant in accessing finance solely through formal channels may not be significant when considering informal sources. We also found that the increased adoption of digital technologies has an inverse association with the predicted probability of being credit-constrained and quasi-constrained for the average SME in our sample, although our analysis did not establish the direction of causality.","PeriodicalId":430354,"journal":{"name":"IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets eJournal","volume":"123 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127055219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines how online content providers monetize their content when the residing platform gives them full pricing autonomy and allows referral program for their audience acquisition. By using unique data from a popular Chinese content provision platform, we use a structural approach to model a content provider’s pricing and referral marketing decisions. The estimation results highlight the trade-off of the referral program: it helps attract more audience but incurs revenue loss from referral payments. The counterfactual analyses show that platform policy change may cause potential homogeneity of content provision and huge demand loss.
{"title":"Pay for Content or Pay for Referral? An Empirical Study on Content Pricing","authors":"Xintong Han, Pu Zhao","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3468408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3468408","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines how online content providers monetize their content when the residing platform gives them full pricing autonomy and allows referral program for their audience acquisition. By using unique data from a popular Chinese content provision platform, we use a structural approach to model a content provider’s pricing and referral marketing decisions. The estimation results highlight the trade-off of the referral program: it helps attract more audience but incurs revenue loss from referral payments. The counterfactual analyses show that platform policy change may cause potential homogeneity of content provision and huge demand loss.","PeriodicalId":430354,"journal":{"name":"IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets eJournal","volume":"131 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127040389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Embedding management and operational practices survey in a broader firm capabilities survey, this paper finds that an average firm in Croatia scores 0.532 on structured management practices, which is farther from the frontier (0.615 in the United States). This average, however, masks the wide heterogeneity in management practices among firms. Relative to advanced countries, a large share of firms in Croatia are badly managed. Management is particularly worse in services and more so in non-knowledge intensive services. Better managed firms show superior performance: improving the management score from the 10th decile to the 90th decile is expected to improve sales per employee by 36 percent, profits by 33 percent and the probability to innovate by 11 percent. Likewise, better managed firms more likely use sophisticated technologies and have a higher probability of accessing external finance. What drives firms to improve their management practices? As elsewhere in the world, global linkages of firms matter. However, unlike the evidence in advanced countries, management capabilities in Croatia is negatively associated with firm age, especially in services, indicating the possibility of allocative inefficiency, where learning and selection mechanism does not weed out the badly managed firms perhaps due to the lack of pro-competitive forces.
{"title":"Management Practices in Croatia: Drivers and Consequences for Firm Performance","authors":"A. G. Goswami, L. Iacovone, Pavel Chakraborty","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-9067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-9067","url":null,"abstract":"Embedding management and operational practices survey in a broader firm capabilities survey, this paper finds that an average firm in Croatia scores 0.532 on structured management practices, which is farther from the frontier (0.615 in the United States). This average, however, masks the wide heterogeneity in management practices among firms. Relative to advanced countries, a large share of firms in Croatia are badly managed. Management is particularly worse in services and more so in non-knowledge intensive services. Better managed firms show superior performance: improving the management score from the 10th decile to the 90th decile is expected to improve sales per employee by 36 percent, profits by 33 percent and the probability to innovate by 11 percent. Likewise, better managed firms more likely use sophisticated technologies and have a higher probability of accessing external finance. What drives firms to improve their management practices? As elsewhere in the world, global linkages of firms matter. However, unlike the evidence in advanced countries, management capabilities in Croatia is negatively associated with firm age, especially in services, indicating the possibility of allocative inefficiency, where learning and selection mechanism does not weed out the badly managed firms perhaps due to the lack of pro-competitive forces.","PeriodicalId":430354,"journal":{"name":"IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets eJournal","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114279098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Innovations embody novel features or cutting-edge components aimed at delivering desired customer benefits. Oftentimes, however, we observe the need to recall new products shortly after their introduction. Indeed, a firm may rush an innovation to market in an attempt to pre-empt rivals and capture early demand, yet in so doing forgo rigorous testing, thus subjecting itself to the risk of a product recall. To shed light on this phenomenon, we construct a dynamic game-theoretic model in which firms plan to launch their innovations. Each firm must decide whether to conduct time-consuming quality assurance testing, which ensures no defects or safety problems but delays the launch. If the innovation is released without such testing and a recall occurs, the firm incurs pecuniary costs and faces future reputation damage in marketing the recalled innovation. We investigate the strategic forces behind firms’ testing and launch-timing decisions in this context. The analysis uncovers a novel mechanism, linked to the possibility of a rival going bankrupt, that causes firms to become more inclined to rush to market and take on the risk of product failure even as the negative consequences of a recall increase. The results further demonstrate how firms’ desire to forgo testing exhibits an inverse-U pattern as consumers become more heterogeneous and how competitive forces may induce both firms to forgo testing, although the resulting profits are lower than had they both committed to conduct testing. The framework is extended to examine how product recall considerations affect firms’ research and development (R&D) investments. Although, in general, post-innovation product failure discourages R&D effort, we identify conditions under which an increase in the recall probability stimulates firms to innovate. Several model extensions are presented, and managerial implications are discussed. This paper was accepted by Dmitri Kuksov, marketing.
{"title":"I Don’t 'Recall': The Decision to Delay Innovation Launch to Avoid Costly Product Failure","authors":"Byungyeon Kim, Oded Koenigsberg, E. Ofek","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3492105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3492105","url":null,"abstract":"Innovations embody novel features or cutting-edge components aimed at delivering desired customer benefits. Oftentimes, however, we observe the need to recall new products shortly after their introduction. Indeed, a firm may rush an innovation to market in an attempt to pre-empt rivals and capture early demand, yet in so doing forgo rigorous testing, thus subjecting itself to the risk of a product recall. To shed light on this phenomenon, we construct a dynamic game-theoretic model in which firms plan to launch their innovations. Each firm must decide whether to conduct time-consuming quality assurance testing, which ensures no defects or safety problems but delays the launch. If the innovation is released without such testing and a recall occurs, the firm incurs pecuniary costs and faces future reputation damage in marketing the recalled innovation. We investigate the strategic forces behind firms’ testing and launch-timing decisions in this context. The analysis uncovers a novel mechanism, linked to the possibility of a rival going bankrupt, that causes firms to become more inclined to rush to market and take on the risk of product failure even as the negative consequences of a recall increase. The results further demonstrate how firms’ desire to forgo testing exhibits an inverse-U pattern as consumers become more heterogeneous and how competitive forces may induce both firms to forgo testing, although the resulting profits are lower than had they both committed to conduct testing. The framework is extended to examine how product recall considerations affect firms’ research and development (R&D) investments. Although, in general, post-innovation product failure discourages R&D effort, we identify conditions under which an increase in the recall probability stimulates firms to innovate. Several model extensions are presented, and managerial implications are discussed. This paper was accepted by Dmitri Kuksov, marketing.","PeriodicalId":430354,"journal":{"name":"IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets eJournal","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131333377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper fills a gap in the existent literature on the determinants associated with the likelihood of being involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by insurance firms. We investigate firm factors for both becoming a target or becoming an acquirer using a detailed database of the Spanish insurance industry over the period 2000-2012. The period encompasses the years of the global wave of M&As in the 2000s and the recent financial crisis. Results indicate that value-enhancing strategies have been the main motivations for M&As, since the increase of performance in terms of scale and allocative efficiency are principal reasons to be involved as acquirers and insurers are more likely to be targets if they are less profitable and have higher premium growth rates. We also find that insurer ownership type matters to be involved in M&As and this finding does not necessarily have to be explained by managerial entrenchment arguments. Results also show variations among different ownership types concerning the influence of the product diversification determinant on the probability to become acquirers.
{"title":"Determinants of Mergers and Acquisitions: Evidence from the Insurance Industry","authors":"J. Cummins, María Rubio-Misas","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3491165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3491165","url":null,"abstract":"This paper fills a gap in the existent literature on the determinants associated with the likelihood of being involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by insurance firms. We investigate firm factors for both becoming a target or becoming an acquirer using a detailed database of the Spanish insurance industry over the period 2000-2012. The period encompasses the years of the global wave of M&As in the 2000s and the recent financial crisis. Results indicate that value-enhancing strategies have been the main motivations for M&As, since the increase of performance in terms of scale and allocative efficiency are principal reasons to be involved as acquirers and insurers are more likely to be targets if they are less profitable and have higher premium growth rates. We also find that insurer ownership type matters to be involved in M&As and this finding does not necessarily have to be explained by managerial entrenchment arguments. Results also show variations among different ownership types concerning the influence of the product diversification determinant on the probability to become acquirers.","PeriodicalId":430354,"journal":{"name":"IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets eJournal","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124048815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-11-20DOI: 10.18601/01245996.v22n42.06
M. Nieto
Este articulo evalua la consistencia teorica y metodologica del nuevo argumento austriaco contra la posibilidad del calculo economico en el socialismo desarrollado por la nueva generacion de autores austriacos. Primero describe la evolucion de la critica austriaca al socialismo. Luego expone los fundamentos de ese nuevo argumento, tomando como referencia el libro de Huerta de Soto Socialismo, calculo economico y funcion empresarial. A partir de sus ejemplos y explicaciones, asi como de otros autores austriacos, muestra que dicho argumento contra el calculo socialista se basa en razonamientos circulares o en problemas ya resueltos por las nuevas tecnologias de la informacion y comunicacion.
{"title":"¿Es imposible el cálculo económico en el socialismo? Crítica a la nueva lectura austriaca (Is Economic Calculation Impossible in Socialism? Criticism of the New Austrian Reading)","authors":"M. Nieto","doi":"10.18601/01245996.v22n42.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18601/01245996.v22n42.06","url":null,"abstract":"Este articulo evalua la consistencia teorica y metodologica del nuevo argumento austriaco contra la posibilidad del calculo economico en el socialismo desarrollado por la nueva generacion de autores austriacos. Primero describe la evolucion de la critica austriaca al socialismo. Luego expone los fundamentos de ese nuevo argumento, tomando como referencia el libro de Huerta de Soto Socialismo, calculo economico y funcion empresarial. A partir de sus ejemplos y explicaciones, asi como de otros autores austriacos, muestra que dicho argumento contra el calculo socialista se basa en razonamientos circulares o en problemas ya resueltos por las nuevas tecnologias de la informacion y comunicacion.","PeriodicalId":430354,"journal":{"name":"IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets eJournal","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132458666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In order to facilitate national competition authorities (NCAs) in their application of EU competition rules, the EU legislator adopted Directive 2019/1/EU. The Directive’s aim is to empower the competition authorities of the Member States to be more effective enforcers of competition law and to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market. The so-called ECN+ Directive introduces minimum harmonisation rules allowing competition authorities to have common investigative, decision-making (notably fining decisions) and enforcement powers. The Directive, furthermore, sets minimum safeguards for the NCAs’ independence, accountability and resources as well as harmonizes leniency programmes including the coordination of national leniency programmes with each other and with that of the European Commission. This paper critically analyzes the legal and policy developments that paved the way for the adoption of this Directive. Moreover, it examines the changes the implementation of the Directive is likely to generate in current Hungarian law and policy of competition protection. The focus of the paper’s assessment is on the institutional aspects of the Directive and the enforcement of Articles 101 and 102 TFEU, in particular the mechanisms for ensuring independence and accountability of the NCAs. Through the assessment of the Hungarian implementation, the paper aims to shed light on a broader context of the Directive and the enforcement of EU competition law in EU Member States. The paper shows that the implementation of the Directive may fail to translate into (more) effective enforcement without an effective institutional capacity on the side of the NCAs, and in the broader legal and constitutional context of competition law and its multilevel enforcement
{"title":"The Implementation of the ECN+ Directive in Hungary and Lessons Beyond","authors":"Kati Cseres","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3489903","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3489903","url":null,"abstract":"In order to facilitate national competition authorities (NCAs) in their application of EU competition rules, the EU legislator adopted Directive 2019/1/EU. The Directive’s aim is to empower the competition authorities of the Member States to be more effective enforcers of competition law and to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market. The so-called ECN+ Directive introduces minimum harmonisation rules allowing competition authorities to have common investigative, decision-making (notably fining decisions) and enforcement powers. The Directive, furthermore, sets minimum safeguards for the NCAs’ independence, accountability and resources as well as harmonizes leniency programmes including the coordination of national leniency programmes with each other and with that of the European Commission. This paper critically analyzes the legal and policy developments that paved the way for the adoption of this Directive. Moreover, it examines the changes the implementation of the Directive is likely to generate in current Hungarian law and policy of competition protection. The focus of the paper’s assessment is on the institutional aspects of the Directive and the enforcement of Articles 101 and 102 TFEU, in particular the mechanisms for ensuring independence and accountability of the NCAs. Through the assessment of the Hungarian implementation, the paper aims to shed light on a broader context of the Directive and the enforcement of EU competition law in EU Member States. The paper shows that the implementation of the Directive may fail to translate into (more) effective enforcement without an effective institutional capacity on the side of the NCAs, and in the broader legal and constitutional context of competition law and its multilevel enforcement","PeriodicalId":430354,"journal":{"name":"IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets eJournal","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124984692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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