Economic Tools for Merger Appraisal: A Theoretical and Empirical Standpoint
Pages 24-32
Panagiotis N. Fotis

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6000/1929-7092.2014.03.04

Published: 10 March 2014

Abstract: This paper presents in a retrospective manner economic tools for merger control and market delineation. Particularly, it focuses, via theoretical and empirical standpoint, on price based techniques for merger control such as tools of market delineation in one sided markets as the «Could Approach» of Critical Loss analysis, and tools for measuring the unilateral effects of a merger such as the Upward Pricing Pressure by Farrell & Shapiro (2010), the Gross Upward Price Pressure Index (2010) by Moresi (2010) and the Buying Power Index by Blair & Harrison (2010). The theoretical standpoint reveals that economic tools for merger control have been enhanced through the time in order to deal with the increasingly amount of merger cases, while the empirical standpoint supports the idea that competition economics have become a standard reference during the analysis of them. Even though competition analysis for antitrust and abuse of dominant position cases is considered to be a castle for lawyers, economists play a crucial role in quantifying the effects of mergers on competition.

On Modelling Migrant Behavior Driven by Imitation
Pages 15-23
Elvio Accinelli, Edgar J. Sánchez Carrera and Osvaldo Salas

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6000/1929-7092.2014.03.03

Published: 05 March 2014

Abstract: This paper studies the evolutionary dynamics of migration. We argue that, under bounded rationality, the strategic foundations of the migrant behavior are based in the imitation of peers. We show that any migratory flow can be modeled from a dynamical system, whose parameters reflect the social and economic policies implemented by the decision maker and the rules of the imitative process followed by the population. Education or technological innovation subsidies can lead to an increasing flow of skilled workers to the country in which this policy is more intensively developed. Impact of such subsidies on migration processes can be easily analyzed based on our model. We show that an economy may avoid skilled workers losses as a result of migration flows, only if the number of local firms investing in research and development exceeds a certain threshold value. Moreover, if this value is exceeded, such an economy is attending a positive process of imitation of skilled workers.