Agenda

17 Nov 2025 12:15

Morten Ravn (UCL and CEPR)

Meeting Room 1, San Giobbe Economics Campus

 

Morten Ravn (UCL and CEPR) - Antitrust, Market Power, and U.S. Macroeconomic Outcomes (with Brian Amorim Cabaco)

Abstract:

We provide a narrative record of U.S. federal antitrust indictments from the mid-1950s to 2023. We document a fundamental change in antitrust focus away from civil non-merger and criminal cases towards civil mergers around 1980. Focusing on publicly listed firms, we estimate significant negative abnormal returns following antitrust indictments. From these we derive a measure of antitrust activity. Estimates of the dynamic impact of antitrust at the two-digit sector level and at the aggregate level show that higher antitrust activity stimulates competition, but also indicate contrasting effects of civil non-merger and criminal cases and civil merger cases on other outcomes. The former are associated with higher mark-up dispersion both for treated sectors and at the aggregate level, discourages R&D investment and have a negative impact on activity both for treated sectors and for the aggregate economy. The latter instead are associated with less mark-up dispersion at the sector and aggregate level, reduce real activity of the treated sector but stimulates aggregate GDP, consumption, investment and R&D.

Lingua

L'evento si terrà in inglese

Organizzatore

Department of Economics (EcSeminars)

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