EVIDENCE ON

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Paul A. Pautler*

September 25, 2001

* Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission. The views expressed are those of the author and

do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Trade Commission or any individual Commissioner.

Charissa Wellford provided much of the information incorporated in the section on experimental

economics. Kata Mihaly prepared the data tables and graphs. Chrystal Meadows provided secretarial

assistance. I thank two anonymous reviewers for comments. Some of the material included in this

review appeared previously in a 1993 Antitrust Bulletin article.
ii

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ............................................................. 1

MERGER AND ACQUISITION MOTIVES ........................................ 1

Efficiencies ............................................................ 2

Financial and Tax Benefits ................................................ 4

Market Power Effects ..................................................... 5

Obtaining a Good Buy .................................................... 6

Stakeholder Expropriation ................................................. 7

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES FOR THE DIRECT STUDY OF MERGERS ............ 8

STOCK MARKET STUDIES OF MERGER EVENTS ............................... 10

Stock Price Effects ...................................................... 10

Target Firms ..................................................... 10

Acquiring Firms .................................................. 11

Stock Market Returns as Predictors of Ex-Post Merger Performance ......... 11

Market Power Implications ............................................... 13

LARGE SCALE STUDIES OF MERGERS ........................................ 17

Multi-Industry Studies ................................................... 18

Banking Market Mergers ................................................. 22

Hospital Market Mergers ................................................. 26

Other Markets ......................................................... 28

RECENT CASE STUDIES (CLINICAL STUDIES) OF MERGERS .................... 29

Airline Industry Merger Case Studies ....................................... 30

Hospital Merger Case Studies ............................................. 33

Banking Services Merger Case Studies ...................................... 35

Case Studies of Mergers in Other Industries .................................. 37

INDIRECT EVIDENCE FROM STRUCTURE-CONDUCT-PERFORMANCE (SCP) STUDIES

..................................................................... 40

Profit/Concentration Studies .............................................. 40

Price/Concentration Studies ............................................... 42

Other Indirect Evidence .................................................. 47

EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS EVIDENCE ..................................... 49

CONCLUSION .............................................................. 52

DATA APPENDIX ........................................................... 55
iii

Table 1 ..................................................................... 58

Figure 1 .................................................................... 59

Figure 2 .................................................................... 60

Table 2 ..................................................................... 61

Table 3 ..................................................................... 62

Table 4 ..................................................................... 63

Table 4A .................................................................... 64

Table 5 ..................................................................... 65

Figure 3 .................................................................... 66

Figure 4 .................................................................... 67

Figure 5 .................................................................... 68

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................ 69
 

1

 This review does not cover empirical literature that deals directly with antitrust issues such as: empirical methods

for estimating residual demand or demand systems, simulation of the effects of mergers using Bertrand or Cournot

models, or optimal antitrust policy. In addition, the paper makes no attempt to review theoretical developments that

might affect how economists view mergers.

1

I. INTRODUCTION

This paper provides a broad brush treatment of the empirical economics literature regarding

the effects of mergers and acquisitions. Much of the literature has direct or indirect implications for

competition policy.1

Of most direct interest to those concerned with merger-related antitrust issues are three types

of empirical studies: stock market event studies, large-scale accounting data studies, and case studies

that use either interview methods or more objective, data-intensive, pre-merger and post-merger

performance approaches to study individual mergers. In recent years, researchers have begun to merge

the stock market study approach and the accounting/finance approach in the hopes of providing a

more robust analysis. Sections III through VI discuss briefly the strengths and weaknesses of each type

of study as well as discussing specific studies in each category.

In addition to empirical studies that directly use data on mergers, indirect insight into the

potential effects of certain types of mergers might be gained by examining the relationship between

market concentration and the profits or prices of firms in a market. These structure-conductperformance studies are examined briefly in a separate section (VII). Our literature summary also

includes a short examination of the merger-related results that have been obtained in markets

conducted in a laboratory setting (section VIII).

In addition, a data appendix provides information on merger and acquisition activity over the

past two decades. Some of these data reveal general merger trends and some relate more directly to

Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice activity in the merger area (e.g., merger filings

under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act and FTC and DOJ requests for additional information in the course

of reviewing those mergers).

We begin with a short list of possible motives for mergers.

II. MERGER AND ACQUISITION MOTIVES

There are a number of motives that might play a role in merger activity. The most general

motive is simply that the purchasing firm considers the acquisition to be a profitable investment. The

most common theme found in the work of economists who have written about merger activity is that

mergers are often thought of as an alternative form of investment. Firms will undertake acquisitions
 

2

 For evidence that in certain high technology industries, acquisition activity may be a substitute for R&D activity,

see Blonigen & Taylor, R&D Activity and Acquisitions in High Technology Industries: Evidence from the U.S.

Electronic and Electrical Equipment Industries, 48 JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS 47 (March 2000).

 

3

 For a longer list of more specific factors that might influence merger intensity across industries, see WESTON,

CHUNG & HOAG, MERGERS, RESTRUCTURING & CORPORATE CONTROL (1990) or Bittlingmayer, Merger

as a Form of Investment, 49 KYKLOS 127 (1996).

 

4

 Scheffman, Making Sense of Mergers, 4 THE ANTITRUST BULLETIN 715 (Fall 1993).

 

5

 Andrade & Stafford, Investigating the Economic Role of Mergers (mimeo, Harvard Business School, 1999).

 

6

 Andrade, Mitchell & Stafford, New Evidence and Perspectives on Mergers, 15 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC

PERSPECTIVES 103 (Spring 2001).

 

7

 Economies of scale refer to the long-run reduction in the per unit cost of making a product as the volume of

production rises, allowing all inputs to be varied optimally.

2

when it is the most profitable means of enhancing capacity, obtaining new knowledge or skills,

2

entering new product or geographic areas, or reallocating assets into the control of the most effective

managers/owners. Thus, many of the same factors that influence major investment decisions would

also influence merger activity.3 This view of mergers as a special case of business investment is not

universally accepted, however. For example, Scheffman argues that managers seldom consider static

cost reductions or price increases in making merger decisions. Rather, decisions to merge are part of

a broader strategic plan aimed at positioning the firm to achieve some long-term goal.4 In a related

vein, Andrade and Stafford find that the timing of mergers is much different than the timing of general

nonmerger business investment.5

 At the industry level, general business investment is fairly stable

through time, whereas merger activity is much more concentrated in small time periods. In addition,

Andrade, Mitchell, and Stafford note that much merger activity occurs as a reaction to deregulation

and thus is clustered in the post-deregulatory period.6 This research implies that merger activity is

something other than a simple extension of business investment. Regardless of the general

motivations for mergers, there are a few categories of factors that ought to play a role in a least some

mergers. Several of those factors are discussed below.

A. Efficiencies

Firms may combine their operations through mergers and acquisitions of corporate assets to

reduce production costs, increase output, improve product quality, obtain new technologies, or provide

entirely new products. The potential efficiency benefits from mergers and acquisitions include both

operating and managerial efficiencies. Operational efficiencies may arise from economies of scale,7
 

8

 Production economies of scope refer to the reduction in overall costs from the joint production of complementary

products.

 

9

 Consumption economies of scope refer to the increased consumer welfare from the joint consumption of

complementary products.

 

10 For a discussion of conditions under which various efficiencies might (or might not) be attributed directly to merger

activity, see Farrell & Shapiro Scale Economies and Synergies in Horizontal Merger Analysis, 68 ANTITRUST LAW

JOURNAL 685 (2001).

 

11 Prior to 1900 most firms were closely held by owners who also ran the firm. Over time, as the corporate form of

organization grew, the tie between ownership and control became more tenuous. BERLE & MEANS, THE MODERN

CORPORATION (New York, 1932) were the first to extensively study the separation of control from management.

Manne, “Mergers and the Market for Corporate Control,” 73 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 110 (April

1965), studied the role that mergers might play in facilitating a market for whole corporations. Chandler, The

Competitive Performance of U.S. Industrial Enterprises Since the Second World War, 68 BUSINESS HISTORY

REVIEW 1 (Spring 1994) discusses the advent of the modern market for corporate control during the 1970s and 1980s.

 

12 If a firm is poorly managed, its market value will be less than its potential value if the same firm were well

managed. The market for corporate control allows more efficient management teams to profitably takeover such firms.

Barber, Palmer & Wallace, Determinants of Conglomerate and Predatory Acquisitions: Evidence from the 1960s, 1

JOURNAL OF CORPORATE FINANCE 283 (1995) find that this management discipline motive was central to the

hostile takeovers during the 1960s. Mitchell and Lehn suggest that disciplining incumbent management was one

explanation for the "bust-up" acquisitions of the 1980s, where heavily diversified firms were purchased and the parts

resold to firms specializing in each industry. See Mitchell & Lehn, Do Bad Bidders Become Good Targets? 98

JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 372 (April 1990). Also see Jensen, Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow,

Corporate Financ e, and Takeovers, 76 AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW 323 (1986). More generally, Romano

reviews the economics/finance literature and finds the operating efficiency and management control explanations for

mergers to be consistent with the evidence. See Romano, A Guide to Takeovers: Theory, Evidence, and Regulation, 9

YALE JOURNAL OF REGULATION 119 (1992).

 

13 Mitchell & Mulherin, The Impact of Industry Shocks on Takeover and Restructuring Activity, 41 JOURNAL OF

FINANCIAL ECONOMICS 193 (1996), focus on mergers as a means of reacting to industry-specific shocks such as

(continued...)

3

production economies ofscope,8 consumption economies of scope,9 improved resource allocation (e.g.,

more resources in the hands of better managers), moving to an alternative less costly production

technology or asset configuration, improved use of information and expertise, improved focus on core

skills of the firm, a more effective combination of assets, improvements in the use of brand name

capital, and reductions in transportation and transaction costs. It may be that mergers or acquisitions

are the quickest, cheapest, or only way to attain these benefits.10

The gains from mergers and acquisitions are not, however, limited to narrowly considered

gains to the firms (and ultimately to consumers). The ability of one firm to merge with another firm

or acquire its assets also creates a market for corporate control.11 Many economists consider an active

market for corporate control an important safeguard against inefficient management.12 An active

market for corporate assets can also provide benefits in the form of more efficient reallocation of

resources from relatively inefficientto efficient firms during periods of industry contraction or industry

turmoil.13
 

13(...continued)

technology changes. They argue that the timing and clustering of 1980s takeovers and restructurings indicate that these

actions were the means by which firms and industries adjusted to exogenous shocks. Andrade, Mitchell & Stafford, New

Evidence and Perspectives on Mergers, 15 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 103 (Spring 2001) focus on

reactions to deregulation as a driving force behind much of the 1990s merger activity.

 

14 In the absence of bankruptcy costs, investors may be able efficiently to diversify by purchasing shares in a number

of unrelated firms, thereby reducing any benefits from diversification within a single firm.

 

15

 See Romano, supra note 12, at 133-136.

 

16 For a discussion of the complex effects of the 1986 Act, see GILSON & KRAAKMAN, THE LAW AND

FINANCE OF CORPORATE ACQUISITION, SUPPLEMENT 1988, (1988). In a related study, D. BREEN, THE

POTENTIAL FOR TAX GAIN AS A MERGER MOTIVE: A SURVEY OF CURRENT KNOWLEDGE AND

RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES, (Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission, 1987), also found little evidence

that tax policy affected the pattern of mergers. Tax effects were not entirely eliminated , however. Long & Ravenscraft,

Decade of Debt: Lessons from LBO's in the 1980s, THE DEAL DECADE: WHAT TAKEOVERS AND LEVERAGED

BUYOUTS MEAN FOR CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, ( Blair ed. 1993) found evidence that the deductibility of

interest payments (which was largely unaffected by the Tax Reform Act of 1986) was a major source of cash flow

improvements in LBO firms during the 1980s. Schipper & Smith, Effects of Management Buyouts on Corporate Interest

and Depreciation Tax Deductions, 34 JOURNAL OF LAW AND ECONOMICS 295 (1991), who examine management

buy-outs, however, (p. 329) note that because any tax gains from interest deductibility could be obtained without going

through a takeover or merger, its is not clear why one would necessarily expect that deductibility to affect merger or

takeover activity.

 

17 A graph of the number of monthly merger filings required by the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act shows a very large spike

in November 1986 (494 transactions in one month - an all time high) that resulted from firms trying to beat an adverse

tax effect of the 1986 Tax Act which was to take effect in January 1987 (See Figure 3). That tax effect likely was very

(continued...)

4

B. Financial and Tax Benefits

Mergers and acquisitions may lead to financial efficiencies. For example, firms may diversify

their earnings by acquiring other firms or their assets with dissimilar earnings streams. Earnings

diversification within firms may lessen the variation in their profitability, reducing the risk of

bankruptcy and its attendant costs.14

Prior to the mid-1980s, there may also have been significant tax reduction benefits associated

with mergers and acquisitions. The empirical evidence, however, regarding these benefits implied that

if they existed, they were likely not a major motivation for most merger activity. Romano’s15 review

of the literature on the tax incentives for mergers up to about 1990 found little support for the

hypothesis that tax changes had a significant effect on takeover activity. Regardless, of how extensive

the tax benefits were prior to 1987, for more recent mergers, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which

broadened the definition of taxable income and limited the ability of acquiring firms to use the

acquired firm's net operating losses to reduce future taxes, likely reduced any potential tax benefits

associated with mergers and acquisitions.16 The loss of one tax benefit, related to a change in the

“General Utilities” doctrine, was almost surely the cause of a late 1986 increase in merger activity as

firms rushed to beat the higher taxes that would be required in 1987.17
 

17(...continued)

short-lived, affecting the timing of mergers, but not the long-run number of mergers .

 

18 Stigler, Monopoly and Oligopoly by Merger, 40 AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW (May 1950), reprinted in

THE ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY (1968).

 

19 The historical evidence is unclear about whether or not late nineteenth and early twentieth century industrial and

railroad "trusts" actually engaged in what we understand today as anticompetitive behavior. ARMENTANO,

ANTITRUST AND MONOPOLY: ANATOMY OF A POLICY FAILURE (1990), argues that these firms tended to

have many rivals and that they continuously increased output and reduced prices. Interestingly, Ginsburg, Rationalizing

Antitrust: A Reply to Professor Armentano, 35 ANTITRUST BULLETIN 329 (Summer 1990), former Assistant

Attorney General for Antitrust, does not dispute Armentano's report of the history. For a recent recounting of the history

for Standard Oil, see Boudreaux & Folsom, MicroSoft and Standard Oil: Radical Lessons for Antitrust Reform,

ANTITRUST BULLETIN 555 (1999). Boudreaux & Folsom argue that Standard Oil’s market share peaked at about

90% in 1890 and had fallen to 65% by 1911 when the government’s antitrust case was filed. During this time, prices

and unit costs fell and quantities rose as Rockefeller pursued productivity gains. For some evidence from turn of the

century stock markets indicating that trust formation was likely to be welfare enhancing on average, see Banerjee &

Eckard, Are Mega-Mergers Anticompetitive? Evidence From the First Great Merger Wave, 29 RAND JOURNAL OF

ECONOMICS 803 (Winter 1998). For a general argument that the antitrust laws do not systematically provide benefits

by reducing market power and were not intended to do so, see McCHESNEY & SHUGART, THE CAUSES AND

CONSEQUENCES OF ANTITRUST: THE PUBLIC CHOICE PERSPECTIVE (1995).

 

20 Stigler, The Economic Effects of the Antitrust Laws, 9 JOURNAL OF LAW & ECONOMICS (October 1966)

reprinted in G. Stigler, ed., THE ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY (1968) concludes that the 1950 merger act had a

strongly adverse effect upon horizontal mergers of large firms.

 

21 Since the 1970s, in the small percentage of merger transactions that were considered competitively troubling

enough to be reviewed closely by the antitrust agencies (amounting to 2 to 4 percent of filed mergers or about 50 to 100

per year), the antitrust agencies often required divestitures to address the anticompetitive aspects of the transactions prior

to allowing the merger to move forward.

5

C. Market Power Effects

Some mergers may result in market power which redounds to the benefit of the merging firms.

For example, George Stigler18 argued that such an effect might have been a primary motivation for

many of the mergers and acquisitions during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first half

of the 20th century. He called the 1887-1904 merger wave "mergers for monopoly" and the 1916-1929

wave "mergers for oligopoly." Regardless of whether market power was, or was not, a major

motivation for mergers in the first-half of the century,19 it is doubtful that the bulk of more recent

merger activity could be attributed to an effort to secure market power. Following the passage and

enforcement of effective antimerger legislation in 1950, mergers between competing firms with

significant market shares (those mergers most likely to be anticompetitive) became relatively rare,20

and those that did occur (mainly in the 1980s and 1990s) were allowed only after review by the U.S.

antitrustagenciesor otherregulatory agencies (e.g., FCC for telecommunications, FERC for electricity,

State Attorneys General, etc.).21

D. Management Greed, Self-Aggrandizement, or Hubris
 

22 Morck, Shleifer & Vishny, Do Managerial Objectives Drive Bad Acquisitions? 45 JOURNAL OF FINANCE 31

(March 1990). Blair also provides evidence that during the latter half of the 1980s managers used excess earnings to

inefficiently pursue takeovers. See (Blair ed. 1993) THE DEAL DECADE: WHAT TAKEOVERS AND LEVERAGED

BUYOUTS MEAN FOR CORPORATE GOVERNANCE.

 

23 For example, Avery, Chevalier & Schaefer, Why Do Managers Undertake Acquisitions? An Analysis of Internal

and External Rewards for Acquisitiveness, JOURNAL OF LAW ECONOMICS & ORGANIZATION 24 (April 1998),

find evidence from the mid-1980s that CEOs may pursue acquisitions to enhance their prestige and status in the business

community.

 

24

 See Mitchell & Lehn, supra note at 12.

 

25 Matsusaka, Takeover Motives During the Conglomerate Merger Wave, 24 RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

357 (Autumn 1993).

 

26 More recently, Hou, Olsson & Robinson, Does Takeover Increase Stockholder Value? (mimeo, University of

Chicago, 2000 ) confirmed that diversifying mergers were value enhancing during the 1963 to 1995 period using

observation periods from 4 months to 3 years following the mergers. Barber, Palmer & Wallace, Determinants of

Conglomerate and Predatory Acquisitions: Evidence from the 1960s 1 JOURNAL OF CORPORATE FINANCE 283

(April 1995) find that the motives underlying conglomerate mergers of the 1960s were as economically sound as those

underlying the non-conglomerate mergers. In a related vein, Maloney, McCormick & Mitchell, Managerial Decision

Making and Capital Structure, 66 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS 189 (April 1993) examined over 950 mergers and

acquisitions finding that increased leverage may be one way to minimize costs of managerial discretion. Increased debt

seemed to improve decision-making. Mueller & Reardon, Rates of Return on Corporate Investment, 60 SOUTHERN

ECONOMIC JOURNAL 430 (October 1993), at 443 also find that result.

 

27 A firm might, however, be a "good buy" if it were undervalued because of poor management and the existence of

state antitakeover laws or other impediments that prevent the market for corporate control from working effectively.

6

Morck, Shleifer, and Vishny22 present evidence consistent with the notion that managerial

incentives may drive some mergers that ultimately reduce the long-run value of the firm. The

managers may overdiversify, overemphasize growth, or simply make bad acquisition decisions.23

Although self-aggrandizement by managers may motivate some mergers and acquisitions, Mitchell

and Lehn24 provide evidence that managers who make poor acquisitions increase the likelihood that

they will, themselves, become acquisition targets. If so, the market for corporate control will tend to

reduce the scope of self-aggrandizing behavior. In addition, Matsusaka25 provides evidence from the

conglomerate merger era (1968-74) that at the time these diversifying deals were struck, the market

favored the transactions. Thus, a characterization of this period as one filled with "run-away"

managers, would be incorrect. For better or worse, the market apparently approved of the

diversification.26

E. Obtaining a Good Buy

While acquiring firms cite "obtaining a good buy" as a reason for their acquisitions, the

underlying implication that markets may consistently undervalue corporate assets, is questionable.27

If all potential acquirers have similar perceptions about the value of potential targets and the market

for corporate control is competitive, then the potential acquirers would bid up the price of targets

which appeared to be bargains until the acquiring firms would, at the margin, expect to receive only
 

28 Indeed, Roll, The Hubris Hypothesis of Corporate Takeovers, 59 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS 197 (April 1986),

argues that "hubris" may induce the management of an acquiring firm to overbid for its target. For a discussion of

evidence related to the hubris hypothesis, see Romano, supra note 12, at 150-152. 

 

29 For some evidence regarding the stock market’s apparent preference for cash-based acquisitions, see Andrade,

Mitchell & Stafford, New Evidence and Perspectives on Mergers, 15 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES,

103 (Spring 2001); and Hou, Olsson & Robinson, Does Takeover Increase Stockholder Value? (mimeo, University of

Chicago, 2000).

 

30 Shleifer & Summers, Breach of Trust in Hostile Takeovers, in CORPORATE TAKEOVERS AND THEIR

CONSEQUENCES (Auerbach, ed. 1988).

 

31 "Stakeholders" refers to all parties that have an interest in the well-being of a firm including stockholders, creditors,

managers, employees, retirees, customers, suppliers, and residents of the community in which the firm is located.

 

32

 See Romano, supra note 12, at 133-142.

 

33 Since Romano's review additional work on the stakeholder effects has been forthcoming. That literature has shown

some negative effects on bondholders, particularly those holders of higher quality bonds. The size of this effect is

insufficient, however, to explain the large premiums obtained in the takeovers and thus bondholder expropriation cannot

be a convincing argument by itself for the takeover activity. See Warga & Welch, Bondholder Losses in Leveraged

Buyouts, 6 REVIEW OF FINANCIAL STUDIES 959 (Winter 1993). In addition, research has continued on the labor

(continued...)

7

a normal return from their acquisitions. This expectation is consistent with many of the empirical

results on the effects of mergers - buyers appear to earn small returns, if anything. If, however,

perceptions differ (for example, the acquirer is more optimistic than the target), then the acquiring firm

may believe that it found a bargain while the target can be happy with the acquirer's offer.28

Because mergers done through stock appear to differ from those done via cash (the stock

market appears to prefer cash deals),29 some commentators have wondered whether the use of

“overvalued” stock might allow a firm to make a “good buy.” This theory implies that the purchasing

firm that uses stock to pay for the assets has better information than the selling firm shareholders who

are accepting the stock in payment. Whether this is plausible might depend on the compensation

schemes for selling firms’ executives and the extent of unique information held by the purchasing

firms’ managers.

F. Stakeholder Expropriation

Shleifer and Summers30 suggest a number of other motives for mergers and acquisitions in

which the shareholders may gain at the expense of other stakeholders.31 For example, some target

firms may seek acquirers to escape financial problems or to break unfavorable labor contracts. Other

firms may seek leveraged purchases of their targets to increase the surviving firms' risk-return profile

at the expense of existing debt holders. Romano32 evaluated the various stakeholder arguments based

on the financial/economics literature. While the literature is not always conclusive, Romano generally

finds the evidence to be inconsistent with the theory that takeovers are motivated by a desire to

expropriate gains from taxpayers, bondholders, labor, or consumers.33
 

33(...continued)

expropriation question. Peoples, Hekmat & Moini, Corporate Mergers and Union Wage Premiums, 17 JOURNAL OF

ECONOMICS AND FINANCE 65 (Summer 1993) find that greater merger activity in an industry is associated with a

lower wage for unionized workers, but no difference in wages for nonunion workers. Another recent study of 120 hostile

takeovers occurring between 1979 and 1989 found that the likelihood of being a hostile takeover target was unrelated

to the wage structure of the industry. Thus, firms paying wages above the norm did not appear to be more likely to

become targets. These results imply that takeovers during the 1980s were not likely motivated by a desire to inefficiently

redistribute income from workers to owners. See Neumark & Sharpe, Rents and Quasi Rents in the Wage Structure:

Evidence from Hostile Takeovers, 35 INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 154 (April 1996).

 

34 Event studies using stock market data are subject to certain methodological problems. The studies are often

sensitive to differences in study design, definition of data, and selection of the sample. Some economists have further

argued that the stock market may be inefficient and that this inefficiency may significantly detract from the usefulness

of stock market event analyses. For discussion of this point, see RAVENSCRAFT & SCHERER, MERGERS, SELLOFFS, AND ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY (1987), at 7-11, and Kleindon, Variance Bounds Tests and Stock Price

Valuation Models, 94 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 953 (1986). For a more recent argument that market

predictions are fairly accurate predictors of ultimate merger performance, see Sirower & O’Byrne, The Measurement

of Post-Acquisition Performance: Toward a Value-Based Benchmarking Methodology, 11 JOURNAL OF APPLIED

CORPORATE FINANCE 107 (Summer 1998).

8

III. ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES FOR THE DIRECT STUDY OF MERGERS

Evidence regarding the effects of mergers comes to us from many different sources. Much

of the evidence comes from the finance literature where the main focus is on the ultimate effect of a

merger on the stockholders of the acquiring and target firms. One common technique for examining

the effects of a merger or acquisition employs the stock market's reaction to the event. “Event studies”

utilize the assumption of efficient financial markets (i.e., the notion that the price of a firm’s stock

reflects all available information bearing on the expected future profitability of the firm) to assess the

perceived consequences of mergers and acquisitions. A relatively long period before the event is used

to estimate the "normal" relationship between the individual firm's stock price and the price of the

broad market (or of a matched sample of firms). A change in this normal relationship around the time

of the event represents an "abnormal" movement - the stock price movement that is unique to the

event. The abnormal movements are summed over the event "window" (say, five days around the

event date) and statistical tests are performed to see if the abnormal movement during the window of

time is significant.34 For example, when firm A announces that it intends to acquire firm B, one can

check the abnormal movement in the stock prices of each firm to see if the market has a particular

reaction (either positive or negative) to the announced transaction and whether the market thinks that

the buyer, seller, or both are expected to profit by the deal. One can also examine the stock price

reactions of firms that are rivals of the merger partners to see if their stock prices moved abnormally

around the time of the acquisition announcement or around the time a challenge to the merger is

announced by an antitrust agency. The examination of rivals’ stock price movements around these

events (arguably) helps in determining the competitive implications of a merger.

A second approach to measuring merger effects involves examining the accounting data for

firms before and after an acquisition to determine the changes associated with the merger. These
9

studies may focus on accounting rates of return, profit margins, cash flow returns, expense ratios, or

any number of other accounting and financial measures of firm performance. Each measure has its

proponents and critics. These studies try to control for confounding factors by comparing the postacquisition changes in financial performance to industry averages or(better yet) to multiple regressionbased estimates of what would have occurred absent the acquisition. Many of the large sample multiindustry studies in this category examine mergers that occurred prior to 1980, becuase the multiindustry studies were more in vogue in that period. Some of the more recent evidence in this category

comes from studies that compare pre-merger and post-merger performance of firms in only one

industry (e.g., banking or hospitals).

Recently, studies have appeared that have combined the accounting measures and stock market

event study approaches. When applied to relatively large samples of mergers, the results can provide

indications about (1) whether the approaches tend to produce consistent results, and (2) whether the

mergers typically produce gains for shareholders. Some of these studies have also focused on samples

of mergers in which divestitures later occurred to determine whether the initial acquisitions were

efficient.

Yet another technique for examining merger effects is to track prices, output, product quality,

or R&D intensity over time for individual mergers, adjusting for factors other than the merger that

might reasonably be thought to affect prices or output levels. This adjustment is done through

econometric techniques, by choosing appropriate control groups, or both. The bulk of the recent

empirical evidence on mergers using this technique comes from the airline, banking, and hospital

industries, although we also have studies of individual mergers in certain other industries.

Much of the literature on merger effects focuses upon the effects on the firms involved and on

the wealth of the shareholders of the acquiring and target firms. For those mainly interested in the

potential anticompetitive effects of mergers, however, one must recall that there is no way to obtain

a large sample of mergers that would be generally expected to raise prices, reduce output, or reduce

quality post-merger. Those mergers would have to come mainly from the 2% to 4% of reported

mergers that each year are investigated in great detail by the antitrust authorities. In many of those

cases, the transactions are reconfigured to avoid the anticompetitive problem or they are abandoned

after the antitrust agency makes its negative assessment known. This process of merger review and

deal reconfiguration, makes it difficult to assemble a sample of problem mergers. On occasion, the

government sues but fails to block a problem merger, thus producing a possible review candidate.

Even then, being able to obtain sufficient data to model the expected post-merger price is another

constraint. Ultimately, there are precious few potentially problematic deals that make it through (or

around) the antitrust screen and for which there are public data sufficient for post-merger analysis. We

will, however, review a study of one such merger in the hospital industry. Otherwise, one must settle

for a sample of "close call" mergers that might have been thought by some observers to lead to

competitive problems, but that were still allowed by the reviewing agency without substantial premerger remedies. The paper by Schumann et al. presents at least one such case and some of the

mergers in the airline and grocery retailing industries may fall in this category.
 

35 Jarrell & Poulsen, The Returns to Acquiring Firms in Tender Offers: Evidence from Three Decades, 12

FINANCIAL MANAGEM ENT 18 (1989).

 

36 Jensen & Ruback, The Market for Corporate Control: The Scientific Evidence, 11 JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL

ECONOMICS 5 (April 1983).

 

37 Andrade, Mitchell & Stafford, New Evidence and Perspectives on Mergers, 15 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC

PERSPECTIVES 103 (Spring 2001).

 

38 Bradley, Desai & Kim, The Rationale Behind Interfirm Tender Offers: Information or Synergy? 11 JOURNAL

OF FINANCIAL ECONOMICS 183 (April 1983).

10

IV. STOCK MARKET STUDIES OF MERGER EVENTS

While the recent larger scale studies of mergers have used stock market event analysis as one

part of their investigations, there are other studies that have focused principally on that technique.

These studies can be divided into many categories. In this section we review those studies that attempt

to determine the effects of mergers on the merging firms and on the market as a whole. In a second

section, we examine a set of studies that tries to answer the question "Does the merger lead to market

power?"

A. Stock Price Effects

1. Target Firms

Stock market studies using the capital asset pricing model consistently show that target

companies' stockholders enjoy significant abnormal returns. Jarrell and Poulsen35 examine 663

successful tender offers from 1962 through 1985 and find that takeover premiums averaged 19 percent

in the sixties, 35 percent in the seventies, and 30 percent in the first half of the eighties. Similarly,

Jensen and Ruback36 who surveyed 13 studies of pre-1980 stock market data, find positive returns of

between 16 percent and 30 percent to the targets of successful mergers and tender offers. Andrade,

Mitchell, and Stafford report remarkably stable target firm returns of 23 to 25 percent for completed

mergers spanning decades in the 1973 to 1998 period.37

Additionally, Bradley, Desai and Kim38 find that target firm stockholders realize significant

positive abnormal returns upon the announcement of a takeover offer even if the takeover does not go

through. The authors conclude that these gains are primarily due to stock market anticipation of a

future successful acquisition bid for the target. However, targets who defeat a hostile takeover bid

ultimately see their stock value return to approximately the pre-takeover level if no takeover occurs.

These stock market studies consistently find that lower returns tend to be associated with

negotiated mergers, the higher returns with tender offer takeovers. The same phenomenon may be

driving the result that the returns forthcoming from transactions that are paid for in cash are
 

39

 See Hou, Olsson & Robinson, Does Takeover Increase Stockholder Value? (mimeo, University of Chicago, 2000).

 

40 Jensen, Takeovers: Their Causes and Consequences, 2 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 21 (Winter

1988).

 

41

 See Jarrell & Poulsen, supra note 35.

 

42

 See Andrade, Mitchell & Stafford, New Evidence and Perspectives on Mergers, 15 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC

PERSPECTIVES 103 (Spring 2001), esp. Table 3.

 

43

 See Loughran & Vijh, Do Long-Term Shareholders Benefit from Corporate Acquisitions? 52 JOURNAL OF

FINANCE 1765 (December 1997). They also found distinctly different returns for hostile cash tender transactions and

friendly mergers using long post-merger event windows. Compared to a matched sample of nonmerging firms, five year

excess stock market returns to acquirers following a typical 1970s or 1980s transaction were a positive 61 percent for

cash tender offers, but were a negative 25 percent for stock mergers.

 

44 Some commentators have argued that for the small set of mergers that are heavily reviewed by the antitrust

agencies, those agencies obtain more information than is available to the market participants, and thus the agencies can

make better informed predictions about the effects of the merger than can the market.

 

45

 See Ravenscraft & Scherer, supra note 34.

11

systematically higher than those from transactions that involve stock swaps.39

2. Acquiring Firms

Whether the stockholders of the acquiring firms gain is much less certain. Most studies

covering the 1960s and 1970s find that acquiring firms' stockholders receive small or zero abnormal

returns from mergers; some even find negative abnormal returns. Jensen40 summarizes the evidence,

arguing that "[a]cquiring-firm shareholders on average earn about 4 percent in hostile takeovers and

roughly zero in mergers." Jarrell and Poulsen41 identify a secular decline in the returns to successful

bidders in tender offers. They find statistically significant positive abnormal returns of 5.0 percent to

acquiring firms in the sixties and of 2.2 percent in the seventies, but statistically insignificant negative

abnormal returns to acquiring firms in the eighties. The small or negative returns to acquirers in the

1980s was confirmed in several studies and similar results were obtained for a sample of large

acquisitions in the mid-1990s and for all mergers through 1998.42 The negative returns to acquirers

also appeared when the event window was expanded to cover several years.43

3. Stock Market Returns as Predictors of Ex-Post Merger Performance

Stock market event analysis measurements of the net returns to the target and the buying firm

provide a prediction of gains or losses to the shareholders of the merging firms rather than evidence

that the gains (or losses) actually occurred. Thus, the evidence of net gains to the merging partners,

on the order of 1 to 2 percent, may not be persuasive indicia that such gains occurred.44 Ravenscraft

and Scherer45 argue that the history of conglomerate mergers indicates that the stock market predicts

financial outcomes quite poorly. They, therefore, question the usefulness of stock market analyses of
 

46 In a related vein, Stein argues that if firm efficiency can be signaled only by current earnings, then temporarily low

earnings may lead to undervalued stock, causing managers to fear unwarranted takeovers. See Stein, Takeover Threats

and Managerial Myopia, 96 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 61 (1988). Meulbroek et al. have argued,

however, that Stein's hypothesis is inconsistent with their evidence showing that firms' relative R&D spending falls after

the firms are insulated from takeovers by antitakeover amendments. See Meulbroek, Mitchell, Mulherin, Netter &

Poulsen, Shark Repellants and Managerial Myopia: An Empirical Test, 98 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

1108 (October 1990).

 

47 Ravenscraft & Pascoe, Can the Stock Market Predict Merger Success? (mimeo, University of North Carolina and

Center for Economic Studies, Bureau of the Census, July 1989).

 

48 Healy, Palepu & Ruback, Does Corporate Performance Improve after Mergers? 31 JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL

ECONOMICS 135 (1992).

 

49 Kaplan & Weisbach, The Success of Acquisitions: Evidence from Divestitures, 47 JOURNAL OF FINANCE 1078

(March 1992).

 

50 MERGERS AND PRODUCTIVITY, (Kaplan ed.), National Bureau of Economic Research Conference, University

of Chicago (2000), see esp. p. 6.

 

51 Sirower & O’Byrne The Measurement of Post-Acquisition Performance: Toward a Value-Based Benchmarking

Methodology 11 JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE 107 (Summer 1998).

 

52

 See Loughran & Vijh, Do Long-Term Shareholders Benefit from Corporate Acquisitions? 52 JOURNAL OF

FINANCE 1765 (December 1997).

12

mergers.46 More recently, however, Ravenscraft and Pascoe47, Healy et al.48, and Kaplan and

Weisbach49 have each found a positive, albeit weak, correlation between ex ante stock market returns

and ex post accounting measures of profits, cash flow returns, or acquisition success. This conclusion

was echoed by Kaplan in his volume of twenty case studies.50 In a more positive assessment of the

markets’ predictive ability, Sirower and O’Byrne51 argue that their accounting measure (economic

value added) is fairly highly correlated with initial stock market predictions about the success or failure

of a merger (explaining 46 percent of the variation), and thus the market is a useful predictor of the

ultimate outcome.

Rather than using abnormal stock market price movements around the time of an event as

predictors of future actual performance, certain researchers have examined the abnormal stock market

performance of merging firms over a long period of time (a few months to a few years) following the

merger. These studies are not the usual event studies, because they do not use the theory of market

expectations to draw implications about the likely effects of a merger; rather they try to measure actual

performance against a benchmark. In this respect they are like financial studies of pre- and postmerger performance. For example, Loughran and Vijh examined 947 whole firm acquisitions from

the 1970s and 1980s and found that, compared to a matched sample of nonmerging firms, five year

excess stock market returns to acquirers following the transaction were a positive 61 percent for cash

tender offers, but were a negative 25 percent for stock mergers.52 The authors conjecture that the gains

for cash tenders are due to management improvements not available in friendly stock mergers. They

note that the initial stock price changes around the time of the deals failed to efficiently incorporate
 

53 Hou, Olsson & Robinson, Does Takeover Increase Stockholder Value? (mimeo, University of Chicago, 2000).

The authors examine monthly average returns over several horizons ranging from 4 months to 3 years following the event

dates using an estimation technique that adjusts for autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity in the error term The authors

use a three-factor model to derive a benchmark for normal returns. The factors include: (1) the return relative to the

market, (2) an adjustment for firm capitalization size, and (3) whether the acquirer is categorized as a “growth” versus

“value” firm. Both value-weighted and unweighted portfolios are estimated, with the unweighted results being much

larger (e.g., 2.5 percent per month versus 0.70 percent). The authors focus on the weighted results. The use of the long

time horizon results is controversial in the finance literature, because it relies critically on the accuracy of the underlying

model of "normal" returns. For periods beyond a few months, it is difficult to unambiguously attribute abnormal stock

movements to the merger rather than to other activities of the firm.

 

54 The fact that transactions paid for in cash outperform transactions paid for in stock appears to be a common and

robust result of the finance literature. Different authors attribute the result to the accounting treatment, or to

management/shareholder agency issues, or to differing time periods (the hostile 1980s deals done with cash versus the

friendly 1990s stock swaps), but regardless of interpretation, the result appears robust.

13

this information. One other such study by Hou, et al. investigates the abnormal rate of return for a

large portfolio of firms (over 3,400 listed on the three major exchanges) that had undergone mergers

or takeovers between 1963 and 1995.53 The results are broken into various subsets: within-industry

group versus diversifying mergers, buyers versus targets, cash versus stock payment mechanisms,

decade-by-decade comparisons, etc. For the shorter time horizons, the authors find the standard results

- abnormal returns to the portfolio of target firms are large and returns to the buyers are positive, but

relatively small. Returns to the horizontal mergers are large and returns to the diversifying mergers,

while smaller, are still positive and significant. Returns to cash deals (that use purchase accounting)

are significantly higher than those in stock deals (that use pooling accounting).54 The returns from the

1980s are the greatest of any decade (those were the years of cash-based hostile takeovers), but they

also tend to fade more than those of other decades as the horizon is lengthened. As the horizon is

lengthened to two or three years, the abnormal returns tend to get smaller, but remain positive. The

authors conclude that the results are more consistent with mergers being efficient than with arguments

that mergers are managerial mistakes or self-aggrandizing behavior by managers.

B. Market Power Implications

While the finance literature indicates that substantial market valuation gains occur at least for

targets of takeovers, the source of those gains is difficult to identify. The studies surveyed in this

section examine whether market power (e.g., collusion) might be a source of the gains. Because the

market power rationale is implausible for most mergers, this literature focuses only on those horizontal

mergers where the possibility of market power effects is greatest. The market power hypothesis

implies that mergers which create or enhance market power allow the surviving firm and its rivals to

increase product prices. These higher prices should be reflected in increased equity values of rival

firms at the time of the merger announcement. The market power hypothesis also implies that an

antitrust challenge to a merger which creates or enhances market power would harm rival firms by

preventing product price increases. Therefore, the equity values of rival firms should fall on the

announcement of an antitrust challenge to an anticompetitive merger.
 

55 Eckbo, Horizontal Mergers, Collusion, and Stockholder Wealth, 11 JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL ECONOMICS

241 (1983).

 

56

 See Schumann, THE EFFECTS OF FTC ANTITRUST CHALLENGES ON RIVAL FIRMS 1981-1987: AN

ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF STOCK RETURNS TO DETERMINE THE COMPETITIVE EFFECTS OF

HORIZONTAL MERGERS (Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission 1989); Patterns of Abnormal Returns

and theCompetitive Effects of Horizontal Mergers, REVIEW OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION (forthcoming 1993);

Eckbo, Mergers and the Market Concentration Doctrine: Evidence from the Capital Market, 58 JOURNAL OF

BUSINESS 325 (July 1985); Eckbo & Weir, Antimerger Policy Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act: A Reexamination

of the Market Power Hypothesis, 28 JOURNAL OF LAW AND ECONOMICS 119 (1985); and Knapp, Event Analysis

of Air Carrier Mergers and Acquisitions, 72 REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS 703 (November 1990).

Exceptions to this pattern of results are reported by Slovin et al. who find that for 42 airline merger announcements rival

firms did not attain positive stock returns following deregulation of the industry. See Slovin, Sushka & Hudson,

Deregulation, Contestability, and Airline Acquisitions, 30 JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL ECONOMICS 231 (1991). In

addition, Banerjee and Eckhard found negative returns to rivals around the time of “trust “ formation at the 20th century.

See Banerjee & Eckard, Are Mega-Mergers Anticompetitive? Evidence From the First Great Merger Wave, 29 RAND

JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS 803 (Winter 1998). Eckbo, Mergers and the Value of Antitrust Deterrence, 47

JOURNAL OF FINANCE 1005 (July 1992) also found negative returns to rivals in reviewing 205 Canadian mergers

from 1964 to 1982, but positive returns to rivals for his 266 merger sample for the U.S. from 1963 to 1981.

 

57 This pattern of insignificant rival gains at the time of a merger challenge was not found in one study. Prager

examined the case of the Northern Securities railway merger in 1901 finding that rivals gained when the merger was

announced, and lost at the time of the announcement that governments (U.S. and Minnesota) had successfully challenged

the merger. The closest rival firms also gained when the Supreme Court allowed a stock distribution plan that effectively

let the shareholders of the two firms commonly own the merging entities (in effect, the distribution plan allowed the

shareholders to complete the merger that had been found illegal). See Prager, The Effects of Horizontal Mergers on

Competition: The Case of the Northern Securities Company, 23 RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS 123 (Spring

1992).

 

58 For a discussion of Eckbo's work criticizing both the conceptual framework and the application of the method, see

Werden & Williams, The Role of Stock Market Studies in Formulating Antitrust Policy Toward Horizontal Mergers 28

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS 3 (1989). For a second installment to the debate, in

which Eckbo addresses some of the critiques and compares the U.S. and Canadian antimerger enforcement regimes, see

Eckbo, Mergers and the Value of Antitrust Deterrence, 47 JOURNAL OF FINANCE 1005 (July 1992).

14

Most of the studies of this issue, beginning with Eckbo,55 find that shareholders of rivals to

firms involved in horizontal mergers earned significant positive abnormal returns, on average, when

the mergers were first announced.56 However, the rival firms had positive, but insignificant, abnormal

returns when the antitrust complaints against these mergers were announced.57 The interpretation of

these results has been the subject of some controversy.

Based on the results, Eckbo rejects the market power hypothesis. He reasons that rivals benefit

from the originalmerger announcement not because of potential market-power induced price increases,

but rather because the announcement provides new information that firms within an industry can

become more efficient through consolidation. The rivals were unaffected by the announcement of

antitrust complaintsbecausethe benefits they would receive from the government blocking an efficient

merger among its competitors were offset by the decreased probability that they could also merge and

enjoy potential efficiencies.58
 

59

 See Schumann, supra note 56.

 

60 In the case where the government blocks an efficient merger, the small rivals may benefit by the protection from

competition. In the case where the government blocks an anticompetitive merger that also signals potential efficiencies,

the small rivals may gain because they may become more likely takeover targets since their small size makes them less

troublesome to antitrust authorities.

 

61 McGuckin, Warren-Boulton & Waldstein, The Use of Stock Market Returns in Antitrust Analysis of Mergers, 7

REVIEW OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 1 (1992).

 

62

 See Knapp, supra note 56.

 

63

 See Slovin et al., supra note 56.

15

Schumann59 argues that this pattern of returns is also consistent with another explanation -- that

mergers may be both anticompetitive and signal potential efficiencies to rivals. Schumann contends

the reason that rivals are, on average, unaffected by the antitrust complaint is that an antitrust

complaint affects differently sized rivals in different ways. Specifically, Schumann shows that smaller

rivals benefit significantly from an antitrust challenge. Schumann argues that this benefit may occur

regardless of the competitive effects of the merger.60 He concludes that stock market studies cannot

provide unambiguous evidence on the competitive effects of mergers and acquisitions.

This stock market approach to determining the competitive effects of mergers has been applied

to airline mergers that occurred during the 1980s transition from a regulated environment. McGuckin

et al.

61 used stock market event study methods to examine two airline merger events and found that

the stock market value of rivals rose following the TWA/Ozark and Texas Air/Eastern mergers. The

"rivals" were defined rather narrowly to include only two other airlines in each case. Similarly,

Knapp62 finds that airline rivals gained market value at the time of six horizontal merger

announcements in the airline industry in 1986. Knapp defined rivals broadly, including all other firms

in the industry that were not undergoing "events" of their own. More recently, Singal (1996) finds that,

around the time of 14 airline mergers, rival firms obtained positive excess returns in those markets

where concentration was high, but rivals obtained negative returns when common airports were likely

to lead to efficiency gains for the merging firms. The evidence from these studies is consistent with

the anticompetitive effects found by other researchers who econometrically compared data on airline

fares before and after the mergers. Quite different results, however, were obtained by Slovin et al.

63

who examined 42 airline merger announcements. They find that, prior to CAB deregulation, rival

firms did obtain significant returns at the time of merger announcements, but that they did not do so

from mergers occurring after deregulation. They also find that mergers leading to "dominated hubs"
 

64 Slovin et al. examine merger attempts (not completed mergers) and use all airline firms in defining rivals. These

factors may be reasons for the differences from the prior literature, although Knapp, supra note 56, also used a broadly

defined set of rivals and found significant positive effects on rival firm stock prices at the time of the mergers. Another

possibility is that the results are sensitive to the choice of an event window; Slovin et al. provide no discussion of such

sensitivity.

 

65 Whinston & Collins, Entry and Competitive Structure in Deregulated Airline Markets: An Event Study Analysis

of People Express, 23 RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS 445 (Winter 1992) also use a stock market event approach

to examine the airline industry, but they study 24 entry events rather than mergers. They find that the entry by People

Express in 1984/85, mainly at Newark, resulted in significant market value losses by incumbents on the entered routes

($6 to $12 million per route entered), and also caused those incumbents to lower fares (by 20 to 35 percent) and to offer

greater flight frequencies compared to Newark airport averages.

 

66 Hosken & Simpson, Have Supermarket Mergers Raised Prices? An Event Study Analysis, INTERNATIONAL

JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS (forthcoming 2001).

 

67 Such anticompetitive effects might not be incorporated into the stock prices if investors thought that the regulatory

agency (the FTC) would require divestitures to alleviate any anticompetitive effects. The authors argue that during this

period the FTC did not require significant divestitures in the retailing industries and that such divestitures only occurred

after 1995. (It is posssible that the FTC did not consider the anticompetitive potential of the grocery mergers to be very

great, but did consider that to be true in the post-1995 retailing mergers it reviewed. This alteration in approach may

have been due to a change in perspective by the agency or simply a differing facts related to the specific mergers.)

 

68 The stock market abnormal returns data for the announcement of the 1988 American Stores/Lucky’s merger in

Southern California came closest to indicating an anticompetitive effect. There, the rivals’ returns were positive and

significant at the 15% level and the own-firm effect of the event was positive and significant after adjusting for the extent

of horizontal overlap. The California Attorney General blocked that transaction.

16

did not lead to higher returns for the merging firms or their rivals.64,65

The potentially anticompetitive effects of retailing mergers have also been analyzed using the

event study technique. Hosken and Simpson examined stock market reactions around the time of six

grocery store mergers from 1986 to 1995.66 The transactions raised possible local market power issues

where horizontal overlaps occurred.67 Each of the markets was at least moderately concentrated, with

changes in concentration, as measured by the Herfindahl index, ranging from 200 to 900 and the postmerger levels of the index ranged from 1350 to 3000. The authors examine the stock returns of the

merging firms and rivals of the merging firms, as well as the stock prices of grocery retailers located

in areas unaffected by the merger. The latter stock price movements help to control for the possible

efficiency-signaling effect of the merger. The authors do not find persuasive evidence that the

transactions had an anticompetitive effect.68 Rival firms’ stock prices did not rise in 4 of 6 cases and

in the other two cases the increase was not statistically significant. In addition, the authors found little

effect of the extent of horizontal overlap on the own-firm abnormal stock returns.

Stock market event analysis techniques have also been used to examine the effects of

potentially anticompetitive business combinations from long ago. Banerjee and Eckard examine the

stock market price effects of 41 industrial or mining trust combinations formed between 1897 and
 

69 Banerjee & Eckard, Are Mega-Mergers Anticompetitive? Evidence From the First Great Merger Wave, 29 RAND

JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS 803 (Winter 1998).

17

1903.69 This time period was characterized as one of relative macroeconomic stability when the

antitrust laws were not binding constraints on trust combinations. Thus, it serves as a useful testing

ground for examining the effects of trust combinations. They find that around the formation dates of

the trusts, the stock prices of the trust participants rose (15%), and (contrary to the normal results) the

stock prices of their rivals fell (-7%). This pattern of returns hardly seems consistent with a formation

of a dominant firm that provides a price umbrella for rivals, and the authors argue that the stock price

patterns also do not seem consistent with expectations that predation would occur after the formation

of the trusts. Thus, they conclude that the mergers were likely to be procompetitive on average. This

finding is strengthened further if the tobacco trust is not considered. It is possible that the tobacco trust

was unique in following a predatory strategy during this period. Given the paucity of data on

companies during this period and the inferential nature of the predation evidence, the results are not

definitive; but they lead one to question the traditional stories regarding the injurious nature of trusts

during the late 1890s and early 1900s.

The stock market merger event results spanning the past thirty years indicate that there are

probably small net gains to shareholders from mergers on net and that the target firms gain the vast

bulk of the returns. Studies applying stock market merger event techniques to examine potential

market power provide a wide variety of results. The large sample work on U.S. or Canadian mergers

has been controversial and has not produced a consensus regarding the market power effects of most

mergers. The more detailed small sample work has produced some evidence of horizontal mergers

that had no apparent anticompetitive effect (grocery stores) and some horizontal mergers where such

effects were perhaps large (certain airline mergers).

The stock market merger event approach is not the only means of examining the effects of

mergers on the merging firms and on other groups. Those effects have also been addressed through

large sample studies (i.e., large numbers of mergers in one or more industries) that examine accounting

profitability and other measures of merger effects. It is to those studies that we now turn our attention.

V. LARGE SCALE STUDIES OF MERGERS

These studies examine large samples of mergers attempting to discern their effects on either

profits, price-cost margins, prices, costs, market share, or productivity. Many of the studies reviewed

here examine samples of mergers that occurred across a range of industries, while others examine

multiple mergers within one industry. These studies often compare profitability data from merging

or acquiring firms with a control group of companies for a period of years both before and after the

mergers and acquisitions. Some early studies relied only on accounting profitability data and,
 

70 Accounting data, for example, may not reveal the true economic rate of return for a firm. Fisher & McGowan, On

the Misuses of Accounting Rates of Return to Infer Monopoly Profits, 73 AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW 82

(March 1983), convincingly demonstrate that because accounting depreciation schedules do not accurately reflect the

decline in market value of a firm's investments over time, accounting data can provide a very distorted picture of a firm's

true economic rate of return. Whether this holds true for large samples of firms is less clear; see Long & Ravenscraft,

The Misuse of Accounting Rates of Return: Comment, 74 AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW 494 (June 1984). In

addition, the firm level profitability data may be too aggregated to discern the effects of acquisitions of particular lines

of business. Moreover, because asset values are "written-up" at the time of purchase, accounting principles give a

downward bias to the calculation of certain post-merger profitability measures and can bias these studies against showing

either efficiencies or market power effects from mergers. More generally, the choice of merger accounting treatment

(purchase or pooling of interest) could significantly affect the accounting measurements. That will not be so true in the

future because in June 2001, the Financial Accounting Standards Board disallowed the use of pooling-of-interests

accounting, requiring purchase accounting.

 

71 Tobin’s q is the market value of assets divided by their replacement cost.

 

72 THE DETERMINANTS AND EFFECTS OF MERGERS: AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON (Mueller ed.

1980).

 

73 For a review of this study, see Fisher & Lande, Efficiency Considerations in Merger Enforcement, 71

CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW 1610 ( December 1983).

 

74 RAVENSCRAFT & SCHERER, MERGERS, SELL-OFFS, AND ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY (1987).

18

therefore, suffered from several infirmities.70 Other, more recent, studies combine accounting

profitability analysis with other forms of financial analysis to provide a more robust result. Still other

studies focus on changes in other measures of performance (Tobin's q,

71 market share changes, price

index changes, or plant efficiency) and are not subject to the specific criticisms aimed at pre-merger

versus post-merger profit studies.

Multi-Industry Studies

In one fairly extensive study of mergers using accounting profitability measures, Mueller et

al.

72 compared data for large samples of merging and nonmerging companies over a 5-year postacquisition period. The authors found no support for the hypothesis that merging firms were more

profitable after merger than their nonmerging counterparts. Because of accounting method difficulties

and potentially mismatched control groups, this study may not, however, provide particularly reliable

results.73

To address some of the problems of prior accounting data studies, Ravenscraft and Scherer74

employed disaggregated Line of Business data for 1975 to 1977. They find that firms acquired in the

1960s and early 1970s tended to have above-average profits before acquisition and experience profit

declines following acquisition. The profit decline appeared regardless of the accounting methods used

to record the merger, although it was greatest where the acquiring firm used purchase accounting (as
 

75 A similar result has been found for UK mergers from 1948 to 1977. Dickerson et al. examined pre-merger and

post-merger profitability for 2,941 acquiring firms relative to those for nonacquirors. Looking at several years before

and after the mergers, they find lower annual returns for acquiring firms (13.5 percent versus 16.4 percent return on net

assets for nonacquirors) after controlling for firm size class, financial leverage, internal growth rates, company fixed

effects, and time. They note that the results are not sensitive to the choice of accounting profit measure. Dickerson,

Gibson & Tsakalotos, The Impact of Acquisitions on Company Performance: Evidence from a Large Panel of UK Firms,

49 OXFORD ECONOMIC PAPERS 344 (1997).

 

76 This result differs from the bulk of the stock market event literature which consistently finds that the market more

often approves of hostile cash bids than friendly stock-based acquisitions. Perhaps the difference in vintage of the

mergers studied is one explanation for the difference in findings, apart from the difference in research approach.

 

77 These authors also found (pp. 69, 101-103) that target companies purchased via tender offers had pre-tender

accounting profit rates that were about one percentage point (eight percent) below a control group norm. Thus, the

companies acquired via tender offers were marginal underperformers. Following the tenders, the acquired lines of

business that were associated with those companies produced profits that were 3.1 points below the norm. Most of the

decreased post-tender profitability appeared to be accounted for by asset value write-ups following the merger.

 

78 Ravenscraft & Pascoe, Can the Stock Market Predict Merger Success? (mimeo, University of North Carolina and

Center for Economic Studies, Bureau of the Census, 1989).

 

79 The model used by Ravenscraft and Pascoe adjusted for macroeconomic activity levels, the type of merger (i.e.,

horizontal or vertical), the characteristics of the offer (e.g., tender offer, cash payment, etc.), whether partial or full

divestiture later occurred, and industry specific effects.

 

80 Healy, Palepu & Ruback, Does Corporate Performance Improve after Mergers? 31 JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL

ECONOMICS 135 (1992).

19

opposed to pooling-of-interests).75 The authors argue that the profit decline was likely due to a loss

of managerial control by the acquiring firms (mostly conglomerates, in this sample) or to the use of

acquired firms as "cash cows."

Ravenscraft and Scherer also compare the post-merger profitability of different types of

mergers. They find that horizontal and related-business mergers tended to be more profitable than

conglomerate mergers. They further find that negotiated mergers tended to be more profitable than

mergers conducted by tender offer.76 Among tender offer mergers, no significant differences in

profitability appeared between mergers resulting from hostile takeovers and those from takeovers by

"white knights."77

In part, as a reaction to the work of Ravenscraft and Scherer, a new genre of study appeared

that combines the analysis of accounting and financial data with stock market analysis of merger

effects. One early entry in this new field was Ravenscraft and Pascoe78, who examined 244 mergers

occurring between 1963 and 1977. The authors compared operating income to sales ratios before and

after the mergers and found that the abnormal returns of the stocks of the merging firms provided a

better guide to the likely outcome of the merger than did guessing alone.79

Similarly, Healy, Palepu and Ruback80 combined financial accounting analysis and stock

market event study techniques to examine the post-merger outcomes of 50 large mergers occurring
 

81 See Healy et al., pp. 153-158. Similar findings for a sample of 30 large bank mergers during 1982 to 1987 are

reported by Cornett & Tehranian, Changes in Corporate Performance Associated with Bank Acquisitions, 31 JOURNAL

OF FINANCIAL ECONOMICS 211 (April 1992).

 

82 Sirower & O’Byrne, The Measurement of Post-Acquisition Performance: Toward a Value-Based Benchmarking

Methodology, 11 JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE 107 (Summer 1998).

 

83 Economic value added is defined as net operating profit after taxes minus a capital charge reflecting a normal return

to invested capital. 

 

84 Kaplan & Weisbach, The Success of Acquisitions: Evidence from Divestitures, 47 JOURNAL OF FINANCE 107

(March 1992).

 

85 Neither definition is perfect as the authors take pains to discuss. 

20

between 1979 and 1984. The authors focus on a comparison of premerger net cash flow returns with

post-merger cash flow returns relative to those cash flow returns for the rest of the industry. The

authors find that industry-adjusted net cash flow rates of return are around 3 percentage points higher

after the merger. These increases in cash flow returns are also significantly correlated with the stock

market's net positive response to the merger announcements. As is normally found, it appears that the

target firm shareholders tend to capture most of those value increases. But if net cash flow returns are

higher after the mergers, why are they higher? The authors investigate several possibilities and

conclude that operating efficiencies are the most likely explanation. Other explanations for improved

cash flow after the mergers (e.g., labor expropriation, R&D reductions, or market power) do not appear

consistent with other financial evidence or are too small to matter.81

Sirower and O’Byrne82 also examine stock market performance and accounting performance

for merging firms, but use a different accounting measure -- economic value added.83 Using 1970 to

1989 data for 41 mergers in which the buyer was not a frequent acquirer and the target was relatively

large, they follow the firms’ accounting performance for five years and compare it to the short-run

predictions of the stock market around the time of the merger. They find that (1) accounting returns

show that a large majority of deals lose money relative to alternative investments, and (2) the

accounting outcomes match the short-run stock market predictions in 66 percent of cases and explain

46 percent of the variation in the market. Thus, the market predicts actual outcomes with some

accuracy.

Kaplan and Weisbach84 take a slightly different approach by focusing on divestitures. They

examine the post-acquisition experience of 271 large acquisitions occurring between 1971 and 1982.

Of these acquisitions, 44 percent (119) were divested by 1989. The authors focus on two definitions

of acquisition failure: (1) the publicly stated reason for the divestiture is unsatisfactory performance,

or (2) the acquisition is divested at an accounting loss relative to the acquirers' net book value of the

assets.85 The results imply that only 37 percent of the acquisitions that were subsequently divested

could be categorized as clearly "unsuccessful." But acquirers did often overpay for their purchases and

the acquisition targets, as usual, walked away with most of the money. Adjusted by the return on the

S&P 500, the mean sale price of the divested units is 90 percent of the purchase price, reflecting a loss

relative to alternative investments, but a smaller loss than might have been implied by previous
 

86 Acquisitions were defined as "related" if the firms listed a common 3 or 4 digit industry as one of their top 4 lines

of endeavor.

 

87 Mueller, Mergers and Market Share, 67 REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS 259 (1985).

 

88 McGuckin also examined the post-merger market share change in 133 horizontal mergers that occurred between

1972 to 1982. Using 5-digit census categories to define markets, he finds that the combined market share of the firms

declined in the first 5 years after the merger, but then the combined firm's shares rose above premerger levels during the

next 5 years. He reports some evidence that price-cost margins rose more after the mergers in those industries that had

slightly higher concentration levels. McGuckin did not, however, use control groups or industry averages to control for

industry-wide or economy-wide effects in either the market share or price-cost margin comparisons. See McGuckin,

Merger Enforcement: Out of the Courtroom After 75 Years 35 ANTITRUST BULLETIN 677 (Fall 1990).

 

89 Stewart & Kim, Price Changes and Mergers in U.S. Manufacturing 1985-86, in EMPIRICAL STUDIES IN

INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF LEONARD W. WEISS 77-96 (1992).

21

literature. Diversifying acquisitions were sold off at a greater rate than were related acquisitions (the

firm was 42% more likely to divest a diversifying acquisition than a related acquisition), but the

reasons seemed to stem from refocusing of the firm rather than from systematic failure of the

diversifying acquisitions.86 Kaplan and Weisbach also make use of stock market event analysis around

the time of the acquisition to determine whether the stock price movements are correlated with their

ex post measures of acquisition success. They find (as did Ravenscraft & Pascoe, and Sirower &

O’Byrne) that the market did anticipate the acquisition successes and failures to some extent. In their

regression model, acquirers' stock returns were more negative for those acquisitions that later turned

out to be unsuccessful. The market signals are quite noisy, however.

Several large-scale studies of mergers in a set of general industries eschewed the examination

of profits or stock market reactions altogether, in favor of a focus on other indices of post-merger

success or efficiency. In the first of these general merger studies, Mueller87 examined post-merger

changes in market share and found significant declines in market share among lines of business that

were acquired from 1950 to 1972, as compared to those among a minimal-acquisition control group.

The decline was steepest for lines involved in conglomerate mergers. These results support those of

Ravenscraft and Scherer, who also found relatively little beneficial effect of mergers during the pre1977 period.88

Stewart and Kim89 also avoided a focus on profits in their study of merger effects in industry

generally. They examine the relationship between price index changes and merger activity in 119

three-digit U.S. manufacturing industries during 1985 and 1986. Using Census and BLS data, the

authors control for average variable labor and material cost changes, the change in inventory to sales

ratios (to proxy demand conditions), industry concentration, and industry merger intensity. Various

interactions of these variables are included in the model predicting price changes. Both horizontal and

nonhorizontal merger intensity are examined. The authors find that over the two year period,

horizontal merger intensity may have led to price increases on the order of 1.5 percentage points above

those that otherwise would have occurred (prices increase 1% under the "no horizontal merger"

scenario versus 2.5% actual). Nonhorizontal merger activity in general led to the opposite result, as
 

90 In general, the effects of both horizontal and nonhorizontal merger intensity seemed to be most pronounced in the

"moderately concentrated" industries, in which four-firm concentration ranged between 25% and 60%. This study is

carried out at a relatively high level of aggregation, so individual industry factors could not be examined in detail. In

addition, the products examined are likely to be nonhomogeneous, making price and output indices less meaningful than

they are in studies that are more industry specific such as those discussed in section VI.

 

91 McGuckin & Nguyen, On Productivity and Plant Ownership Change: New Evidence from the Longitudinal

Research Database 26 RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS 257 (Summer 1995).

 

92 Maksimovic & Phillips, The Market for Corporate Assets: Who Engages in Mergers and Asset Sales and are There

Efficiency Gains? JOURNAL OF FINANCE (December 2001 forthcoming).

 

93 One might expect that these kinds of deals would eventually get undone by an efficient market process.

22

price increases were reduced from a predicted 3.2% to 2.5%.90

Mergers might also affect plant level efficiency and that issue has been examined in a large

scale study of 28,000 manufacturing plants covering 1977 to 1987. McGuckin and Nguyen focused

on ownership change rather than just mergers.91 They found that most transferred plants tended to

have above average productivity prior to ownership changes, and they improved productivity still

further after the transfer to new owners. For larger plants, many tended to be underperformers prior

to ownership change and those plants also improved productivity under new ownership. Thus, the

majority of asset transfers appeared to be efficiency enhancing.

In a closely related vein, Makismovic and Phillips92 examine 35,000 plants that were

transferred from 1974 to 1992 in the U.S. manufacturing sector. About half of the plants were

transferred via asset sales and the other half via mergers; 45% to 50% of the plants were transferred

to other firms in the same four-digit industry. The paper first describes the activity by seller and buyer

characteristics. Among the interesting descriptive results are that anywhere from 3% to 6% of plants

are reallocated in any year, with the reallocation being more intense when aggregate industrial

production is high. Multi-segment firms (conglomerates) tend to sell their smaller, less productive

divisions and to do so when demand is high and their other divisions are doing well. The

conglomerates are less reticent to sell assets than are single division firms. Buyers of assets tend to

be the larger, more productive firms. The authors also estimate the productivity of the assets and then

examine changes in the productivity of the assets after the sale. On this score, the authors find that

asset transfers generally result in productivity increases as assets are transferred to those who can

manage them most efficiently. The average productivity increase appears to be quite substantial. Most

mergers appear to raise post-merger asset productivity, but for the subsample of whole firm

acquisitions, particularly those that do not increase the firms' segment capacity, the productivity of the

assets falls. Thus, most asset transfers during these 2 decades were efficiency enhancing, but certain

mergers did not improve asset efficiency. Mergers and acquisitions by firms that were initially less

efficient lead to actual declines in productivity.93

Banking Market Mergers
 

94 Only the airline and hospital industries can rival banking in the number of academic studies of mergers performed

within a particular industry.

 

95 Rhoades, Efficiency Effects of Horizontal (in-market) Bank Mergers, 17 JOURNAL OF BANKING AND

FINANCE 411 (April 1993).

 

96 The regression model controls for the merger/nonmerged status of the bank, the deposit overlap of the banks, total

assets size, the loan/asset ratio, deposit growth, the number of branches, large deposit to total deposit ratio, and 50 state

dummies.

 

97 Berger & Humphrey, Megamergers in Banking and the Use of Cost Efficiency as a Defense, 37 THE ANTITRUST

BULLETIN 541 (Fall 1992).

 

98 These comparisons of performance improvements are made via regressions that control for various premerger

characteristics including: the extent of difference in performance between the acquiring bank and the target bank, the

amount of overlap in the banks' deposit areas, the extent of retail deposits, firm size, market share, and market

concentration. 

 

99 There has recently been a number of studies of the effects of large banking mergers on cost efficiency, profit

efficiency, revenues, and prices. For a review, see Akhavein, Berger & Humphrey, The Effects of Megamergers on

Efficiency and Prices: Evidence from a Bank Profit Function, REVIEW OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 12

(continued...)

23

From the large scale studies of multiple industries, we move on to the studies of multiple

mergers in particular industries. Perhaps the most often studied of these industries is banking.

Because they are regulated, banks produce an unusual wealth of performance data. This has, for better

or worse, made banking the subject of particularly intense academic scrutiny.94 Three studies focusing

on large samples of banking mergers take differing approaches to the estimation of postmerger effects,

but none of the three find much evidence of net efficiencies from the mergers. Rhoades95 examined

898 horizontal bank mergers from 1981 through 1986 and compared the change in bank efficiency

ratios of the merged firms to that of all other banks that did not merge during the period. Rhoades uses

two measures of bank efficiency: (1) the change in the ratio of total expenses to assets, and (2) the

change in the ratio of total assets to operating revenues. Using OLS and logit regression analyses, he

found no evidence that the expense ratios of the banks declined three years after the merger, nor did

an efficiency ranking of the merged banks rise relative to that of nonmerging counterparts.96 Thus, he

concludes that there are likely no efficiencies on average from the 1980s mergers.

Berger and Humphrey97 examined as many as 57 large bank mergers occurring from 1981-

1989. Using a multiproduct translog cost function, they define an efficient cost frontier for banking

firms. The banks are ranked based on their closeness to the efficient frontier and the authors test to

see if the merged firms improve their relative ranking after the merger. The authors find that, although

acquired banks tended to be purchased by more efficient banks, the more efficient buyer did not pass

on its cost efficiency characteristics to the merger partner. The combined bank's efficiency rating did

not improve after the merger relative to its counterparts whether that efficiency is measured by

efficiency relative to an efficient-firm frontier, scale efficiency, return on assets, average total cost per

dollar of assets, or average operating cost.98 The authors argue that even if any gains in productive

efficiency exist, they are lost due to scale diseconomies associated with the merger.99
 

99(...continued)

(February 1997), esp. 98-105. The recent consensus seems to be that: (1) bank mergers have the potential to lower costs

(based on the cost function characteristics), but that does not appear to have actually happened; (2) prices paid to

depositors are slightly lower following mergers; thus there is a market power effect even in the set of mergers allowed

by the regulatory authorities, and (3) mergers have allowed banks to better allocate resources to obtain higher revenues

for a given price and cost structure.

 

100 Peristiani, Do Mergers Improve the X-Efficiency and Scale Efficiency of U.S. Banks? Evidence from the 1980s,

29 JOURNAL OF MONEY, CREDIT, AND BANKING 326 (August 1997).

 

101 They used the same large merger data set as Berger & Humphrey, Megamergers in Banking and the Use of Cost

Efficiency as a Defense, 37 THE ANTITRUST BULLETIN 541 (Fall 1992).

 

102 It is suprising that the model can predict the source of 80 percent of post-merger gains. One would not expect

bank managements to fail to observe such large consistent profit opportunities.

 

103 Prager & Hannan, Do Substantial Horizontal Mergers Generate Significant Price Effects? Evidence from the

Banking Industry, 46 JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS 433 (December 1998).

24

Peristani100 confirmed those results in his examination of the outcomes of over 1,000 bank

mergers that occurred in the 1980s. Using data for up to 16 quarters before and after the mergers and

focusing mainly on translog cost efficiency estimates, he found that merged banks did not improve

their x-efficiency rank following mergers relative to nonacquiring banks. Banks did, however, on

average move closer to efficient scale following mergers, compared to the control banks. Using crosssection regressions to try to explain the postmerger changes in costs or profits that he observed, he

found that market concentration growth was negatively related to profit changes. In summary, he

found relatively little in the way of cost efficiency gains from 1980s bank mergers.

A somewhat different result, however, was obtained by Akhavein et al. who examined profit

efficiency (not cost efficiency) for 57 large bank mergers from the 1980s.101 Compared to all large

banks, they found substantial gains to the merging banks, not from market power, nor from cost

reductions, but rather from improved technical profit efficiency due to shifts in product mix toward

loans and away from securities. Why one would need mergers to accomplish these changes in product

mix is unclear, but the product mix changes apparently did not happen to the same extent in the

nonmerged control sample. The authors use a regression model to explain the change in profit

efficiency following the merger, and their model is found to explain 80 percent of the variance in profit

efficiency.102 They find that the profit efficiency gains are due to the improved use of both banks’

assets as both banks are “awakened” to available profit opportunities by the merger. The profit

efficiency gains did not appear related to either market concentration or to bank market share and the

authors found only very small effects on loan and deposit rates following mergers, although their price

data were rather crude.

Because price data used in the banking merger studies was often imperfect, one study was done

to examine more reliable survey data concerning the price effects of recent large banking mergers.

Using banks as the unit of observation, Prager and Hannan103 examine a cross-section of local banking

markets and compare those markets in which a merger occurred between 1992 and mid-1994 with
 

104 Berger, Demsetz & Strahan, The Consolidation of the Financial Services Industry: Causes, Consequences, and

Implications for the Future, 23 JOURNAL OF BANKING AND FINANCE 135 (1999).

 

105 Rhoades, The Efficiency Effects of Bank Mergers: An Overview of Case Studies of Nine Mergers, 22 JOURNAL

OF BANKING AND FINANCE 273 (1998).

 

106 Calomiris would argue that bank mergers have been more efficient than Berger et al. realize because the correct

comparison should be to other banking systems and the consolidation of U.S. banking over the past several years has

(continued...)

25

markets where no such activity occurred. Finding an adverse effect on consumers in the merger

markets might be surprising since each merger was allowed by the regulatory authorities. In addition

to using 412 banks in nonmerger areas as statistical controls, the authors controlled for bank asset size,

changes in bank size, changes in average area personal income, MSA-specific effects, and regional

effects in their model of deposit pricing. The authors find that, for the 26 banks in markets where

substantial horizontal mergers occurred, (that is, market concentration rose significantly), rates paid

to depositors on NOW accounts or Money Market Deposit Accounts (MMDAs) fell 8 to 15% relative

to the rates paid by banks in markets where mergers did not occur. Rates on all accounts fell

significantly from 1991 to 1994, but they fell more in those areas where mergers occurred. For

example, rates paid on MMDA accounts in late 1991 were about 5 percent. By November 1993 rates

paid to customers would have been about 2.6 percent in nonmerger areas, but only 2.4 percent in areas

where a merger occurred. Half of the price differential occurred prior to the merger and the other half

occurred after the merger. Small increases in local market concentration, however, did not appear to

have this adverse effect on depositors. Indeed, rates paid to depositors appeared to rise in those

markets.

This and other banking industry literature on mergers has recently been surveyed by Berger,

Demsetz, and Strahan.104 They note that although there has been considerable merger activity in the

industry, concentration in most local banking markets has actually fallen slightly in the last decade.

Their extensive review concludes that prices become somewhat less favorable for customers when

concentration increases or when mergers result in large concentration increases. The evidence of

higher prices due solely to market concentration is, however, perhaps somewhat weaker in the 1990s

than it was for earlier periods. They also note that mergers appear to be associated with enhanced

profit efficiency and portfolio diversification. Cost efficiency may have improved on average after

some 1990s bank mergers,105 although the evidence from the 1980s was that cost efficiency was not

improved after mergers. It does appear that cost efficiency improves after mergers in cases where the

merging banks are particularly inefficient prior to the merger. The authors also note that availability

of services to small customers is unlikely to change much due to mergers, and while large merging

banks may tend to reduce their small business loan activity after the merger, other banks tend to fill

that void. On average, they do not see large effects (for good or ill) from mergers. Perhaps the

absence of any large negative effects (especially price effects) should not be too surprising given that

the mergers have all been reviewed and allowed by bank regulators. The weakness of the evidence

regarding beneficial cost efficiency effects, on the other hand, is a bit more surprising. Given the

received wisdom in the literature that banks generally are not very efficient, mergers would have

seemed to be one means of weeding out the laggards.106
 

106(...continued)

made U.S. banking relatively much more efficient when compared to the European industry. See Calomiris, Gauging

the Efficiency of Bank Consolidation During A Merger Wave, 23 JOURNAL OF BANKING & FINANCE 615 (1999).

 

107 Sinay, Pre- and Post-Merger Investigation of Hospital Mergers 24 EASTERN ECONOM IC JOURNAL 83

(Winter 1998).

 

108 Connor, Feldman & Dowd, The Effects of Market Concentration and Hospital Mergers on Hospital Costs and

Prices,5 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE ECONOMICS OF BUSINESS 159 (1998). Also see Connor,

Feldman, Dowd & Radcliff, Which Types of Hospital Mergers Save Consumers Money? 16 HEALTH AFFAIRS 62

(December 1997).

26

Hospital Market Mergers

As with banking, the hospital industry has, at various times, been regulated at the state and

federal level. This resulted in the production of publicly available data on hospital performance in a

few states and on a national level. Thus, the industry has come under the focus of researchers who

have attempted to discern the effects of mergers. Again, as with banking, the hospital industry has

peculiarities (such as nonprofit status, and entry and price regulation) that may make any results unique

to the industry.

One study found significant cost reductions associated with mergers. Sinay107 examined

changes in costs that occurred on average after merger events for a sample of 131 hospitals that merged

between 1987 and 1990 and 131 comparable control hospitals. He estimated a translog cost function

for each of three years (one year before and two years after the merger) for the merging hospitals and

for the control hospitals. The changes in the coefficients of the cost functions following the mergers

imply that the hospitals became more efficient after the mergers compared to the control group

hospitals that did not merge (the merged firms became more scale efficient after the mergers).

Cost and price reductions associated with mergers were also found by Connor et al.108 who

examined the effects of hospital mergers on cost per admission, average revenue per admission, and

markups. They examined a panel of 3,500 hospitals from 1986 to 1994 including 122 within-market

horizontal mergers. Using a regression model that controlled for the characteristics of the HSA-based

market, hospital, patient population, area demographics, and area of the country, Connor et al. report

that average costs and prices (total revenue divided by all admissions regardless of payer category) rose

five percent less for the merging hospitals compared to the non-merged hospitals in the sample. The

savings were found to be larger for hospitals merging further in the past, indicating perhaps that the

efficiencies associated with a merger take some time to appear. The authors also found that the

beneficial effects of mergers were larger if (1) the hospitals were of equal size, (2) pre-merger service

duplication was high, and (3) occupancy rates pre-merger were low. The beneficial effects of mergers

were smaller or absent if the merger involved a teaching hospital or if it occurred in a market where

concentration was high. This last result is based on a small number of observations and may not be
 

109 In both studies the HSA market concentration levels may not have been correctly calculated due to a lack of

complete data on ownership of the various hospitals in the AHA data set (see Connor et al. 1998, p. 164). The authors

argue that their concentration data are likely to be correlated with correctly calculated concentration, however.

 

110 Krishnan, Market Restructuring and Pricing in the Hospital Industry, 20 JOURNAL OF HEALTH ECONOMICS

213 (March 2001).

 

111 Krishnan's results raise several questions: why do nonmerging firms in the merger markets not raise price very

much post-merger (the Ohio result). Do mergers purely invest the merging firms with greater unilateral market power

or does quality also improve? Also, why would prices rise so much in instances where the structure of the market was

not affected (the California result)?

27

particularly reliable.109 In addition to examining the effects of mergers, the authors also looked at

changes in cross-section results over time and found that although increased competition was

associated with increased costs in 1986, by 1994 this relationship had altered significantly such that

more competitive areas were associated with lower prices and costs. They attributed this change to

the growth of managed care over the period. 

Quite different results were found by Krishnan who studied the price effects of hospital

mergers that occurred in Ohio and California during 1994 to 1995.110 He found significant price

increases following mergers even when the market structure was not altered due to the acquisition.

The twenty-two mergers that occurred in Ohio during that period tended to alter market structure as

local hospitals combined. By contrast, the fifteen mergers that occurred during that period in

California were mainly chains buying individual hospitals - transactions that did not alter local market

structure. The pricing of individual diagnosis related groups (DRGs) is examined in markets defined

by hospital-level patient flow statistics. Analyses of the Ohio mergers indicate that post-merger

percentage price increases by the merging hospitals are substantial and that they are greater where

DRG market shares rose substantially as a result of the merger. A similar result was obtained for the

price effects of concentration changes. A regression analysis using data for 23 high-volume DRGs is

also undertaken. The author models post-merger relative price changes as a function of the level of

(and post-merger changes in) market share of the hospital in the DRG, market concentration, length

of stay, managed care percentage, hospital size (based on discharges), a residual from a pre-merger

price regression, and fixed effects dummies for each DRG and hospital. Indicator variables are also

included for whether the hospital was involved directly in a merger, and whether the hospital was

located in a market where a merger occurred. Patient level data are not available in Ohio, so the author

could control for hospital characteristics, but not severity of illness, which is included in the California

regression analysis. The regression results imply that higher post-merger market share of the merging

firms is associated with larger relative post-merger price increases than in otherwise comparable DRG

markets. The authors find that in Ohio, merging firms raised prices per patient 16.5 percentage points

more than did nonmerging hospitals. In California (where market structure was not affected by the

mergers), acquired hospitals raised prices 12 percentage points more than did non-acquired hospitals.

Although market share changes appeared to matter, concentration changes did not affect relative

pricing in the regression analyses.111

 

Rather than asking about post-merger prices or costs, Ho and Hamilton ask whether M&A
 

112 Ho & Hamilton, Hospital Mergers and Acquisitions: Does Market Consolidation Harm Patients? 19 JOURNAL

OF HEALTH ECONOMICS 767 (2000).

 

113 This effect may be largely caused by tighter utilization controls used by the acquiring chain hospitals. If so, the

effect is not due to a market structure change, but rather due to a particular type of ownership change.

 

114 Tremblay & Tremblay, The Determinants of Horizontal Acquisitions: Evidence from the U.S. Brewing Industry,

37 JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS 21 (September 1988).

28

activity in hospitals has reduced the quality of care provided to patients.112 For California

consolidations from 1992 to 1995 the answer to the authors’ question appears to be “yes” for one

measure of quality and “perhaps” for most other measures. The authors examined the probabilities

that three different adverse events might occur based on whether the hospital had been involved in a

consolidation. The adverse events (i.e., the measures of quality) were: inpatient mortality for heart

attack and stroke patients (which was never affected), readmission rates for heart attack patients, and

discharge within 48 hours for normal births. The regression model controlled for comorbidities,

patient volume, transfers, type of insurance payer, patient age categories, gender, year and racial

dummies (and C-section for newborn discharge). Three types of transactions were distinguished -

mergers of two local independent hospitals, buy-outs of a local by a system, and buyouts of a system

by another system. In concentrated markets, consolidating hospitals may have discharged mothers

sooner,113 but for other quality indices, the effects are less consistent across types of consolidations.

Other Markets

The beer industry has also attracted the interest of researchers, because it has a long-running

history of consolidation. Tremblay & Tremblay do not look at the aftermath of mergers, but rather

estimate the probability that a beer manufacturer will buy another beer producer or sell itself.114 They

examine beer industry mergers between 1950 and 1983, a period of substantial consolidation when 74

horizontal purchases and 22 horizontal sales occurred. They model the probability of buying or selling

as a function of market share growth over the preceding two years, industry concentration, industry

scale economies, the firm’s capacity utilization, market share, percentage GNP change, the number

of potential buyers and sellers, and a firm-specific antitrust dummy indicating that the antitrust

agencies would likely block any merger involving the firm. They find that market share growth,

market share level, percent change in GNP, and an antitrust enforcement dummy are significant in

many specifications. Their results indicate that the buyers are the firms that have grown in market

share recently and the sellers are those whose share has fallen. Thus, they conclude that mergers in

the beer industry over this period fostered efficiency by facilitating the transfer of assets to more

efficient firms (managers). They did not confirm this prediction, however, by examining the actual

change in prices, profits, output, quality, or market share for beer producers following the mergers.

Beer is not the only beverage category in which merger activity has been scrutinized. Asset

acquisitions (not always mergers) in a soft drink beverage category have also been studied. Saltzman
 

115 SALTZMAN, LEVY & HILKE, TRANSFORMATION AND CONTINUITY: THE U.S. CARBONATED SOFT

DRINK BOTTLING INDUSTRY AND ANTITRUST POLICY SINCE 1980, (Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade

Commission, 1999).

29

et al.

115 use a unique data set and regression techniques to examine the effects of various 1980 to 1991

transactions on both the prices and quantities of carbonated soft drinks sold in local markets. They

find that horizontal combinations of brands at a particular bottler (e.g., the local Coke bottler buying

the rights to bottle Dr Pepper) are associated with 3 to 12 percent higher soft drink prices and lower

output, while vertical events (e.g., parent Coke buying the local Coke bottler) are associated with 4

percent lower prices (but a melange of output results). Consolidation of “third bottlers” (non-Coke

or non-Pepsi bottlers) leads to a variety of, sometimes counterintuitive, results depending on the size

of the consolidation. The sensitivity of the main results is examined in some detail.

The large scale studies examined in this section provide a variety of results. The multi-industry

studies find that mergers are unprofitable in a significant percentage of instances. On the other hand,

the multi-industry studies of plant transfers seem to indicate that such transfers have been efficiency

enhancing in the majority of instances, particularly where the buyer was more efficient that the seller

prior to the transfer. The multi-merger studies in individual industries also provide a range of different

results. Banking mergers are found to produce some gains related to shifts in product mix, but they

still appear to result in small price increases and relatively little in the way of efficiency enhancement.

Mergers in hospitals are found to reduce costs; but they may also raise prices, particularly in the more

concentrated markets. There is even some evidence that hospital mergers may have been associated

with price increases where market structure did not change at all following the merger. In the beer

industry, mergers appear to have facilitated efficient reallocation of resources. In sum, a wide range

of interesting results, but not a strong pattern.

VI. RECENT CASE STUDIES (CLINICAL STUDIES) OF MERGERS

The large scale, multi-merger studies cannot often delve into the details of individual

transactions. Certainly such detail is impossible to provide in multi-industry studies. This more

detailed examination has to occur in smaller scale studies that dig into individual transactions a bit

more deeply. Although the results from examination of individual transactions cannot be as readily

generalized as might the results from large-scale, multi-industry studies, these case studies might help

provide insight into the motives behind particular transactions and perhaps help researchers devise

better techniques to incorporate those insights into larger scale studies. It is to the smaller scale case

studies that we now turn.

Case studies come in many varieties. Some researchers focus mainly on trade press accounts

and interviews with executives of the merging firms to determine the results of a merger or acquisition.

Other studies examine accounting and financial information to reach a less subjective conclusion. Still

other studies examine stock market reactions at the time of the event or following the event to track

the possible effects of the merger. A few studies use econometric models, control groups of nonmerging firms, and pre- and post-merger price, cost, and quality data to measure the effects of the
 

116 For a discussion of some early merger case studies that tended to be done with less objective data, see Fisher &

Lande, Efficiency Considerations in Merger Enforcement, 71 CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW 1580 (December 1983)

at 1619. The best case studies use control groups and models of expected outcomes to allow the researcher to have more

confidence that any observed effects are truly due to the event of interest.

 

117 Werden, Joskow & Johnson, The Effects of Mergers on Economic Performance: Two Case Studies from the

Airline Industry, 12 MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS (1991).

 

118 Borenstein, Airline Mergers, Airport Dominance,and Market Power, 80 AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW

400 (May 1990), studies the same airline mergers and finds that following the Northwest/Republic merger in 1986, the

merging firms' fares rose relative to industry averages, the market share of the merged firms rose, and service quality fell

relative to the average. Borenstein found no such effects for the TWA/Ozark merger. He attributes the lack of effects

to the general weakness of traffic in the St. Louis market after the merger.

 

119 Brueckner, Dyer & Spiller, Fare Determination in Airline Hub-and-Spoke Networks, 23 RAND JOURNAL OF

ECONOMICS 309 (1992).

30

mergers. The best studies use objective data and multiple approaches to control for factors that might

have affected the firms’ performance in the absence of the merger or acquisition.116 In this section, we

report on some case study evidence for several industries focusing on airlines, hospitals, and banking.

These industries have produced most of the studies not only because a significant amount of

consolidation occurred there, but because publicly available data exist on cost and pricing in the

industries.

Airline Industry Merger Case Studies

Several case studies have focused on mergers in the airline industry. Werden et al.

117 examine

two mergers in the airline industry (Northwest/Republic and TWA/Ozark) and find that these mergers

resulted in higher prices and worse service. The authors estimated equations for revenue per passenger

for several hundred city-pairs both before and after the merger. The equations adjusted for cost and

demand variables as well as concentration levels. They used the premerger data from city-pairs that

were not affected by the merger as a control group to compare with the affected markets. The

Northwest/Republic merger led to significant overall fare increases (5 to 6 percent) and service

reductions. Although the TWA/Ozark merger led to only a small overall fare increase (1.5 percent),

there was a significant service reduction.118

These same mergers were reviewed by Brueckner, Dyer, and Spiller119 who applied their model

of airline pricing to simulate the price effects of the mergers. Their model of pricing was designed to

examine the potential for additional network efficiencies as the merger allows more effective use of

a hub-and-spoke system. Thus, the authors focus on 4-segment flights that go through a hub, but do

not originate or end at a hub. They find that weighted average fares for 4-segment flights would fall

by about 1 to 3 percent after the merger due to the network efficiency effects of the merger. However,

in those city pairs where the merger partners had previously competed, the merger would tend to raise

fares by as much as 6.5 percent. Thus, the effects of a loss of competition appear to overwhelm the
 

120 Other stock market event evidence regarding these cases is listed in section IV. B.

 

121 Kim & Singal, Mergers and Market Power: Evidence from the Airline Industry, 83 AMERICAN ECONOMIC

REVIEW 549 (June 1993).

 

122 The control group for each merger-affected route included about 200 routes of similar distance that were not

served by either of the merging firms.

 

123 Singal, Airline Mergers and Competition: An Integration of Stock and Product Price Effects, 69 JOURNAL OF

BUSINESS 233 (April 1996).

31

efficiency gains due to more effective use of the network.120

Kim and Singal121 examine 14 airline mergers between 1985 and 1988. Using control groups,

the authors examine the relative fare changes that occurred around the time of the merger on routes

served by the merging firms.122 They find that, on average, relative fares on the merging firms' routes

six to nine months after the merger rose by about 10 percent for both merging firms and their rivals.

The behavior of fares in mergers involving failing firms differed significantly from the behavior of

fares in other mergers. Failing airlines had prices that were much lower than average before the

mergers (possibly reflecting perverse end-game behavior). As a result, those mergers involving failing

firms ultimately produced much larger percentage fare increases than did mergers involving only

viable firms. The fare increases, however, took longer to occur after the announcement of the

acquisition.

The authors also used a regression approach to examine the relationship between concentration

changes on a route and the effects of the mergers on relative fares. They examine four subsamples of

the data based on the relationship of a route to a hub of one of the merger partners and whether the

merging firms have overlaps on a particular route. Although relative fares rose more overall where

concentration was higher, the pattern found was surprising. On those routes with competitive overlaps,

relative fares did not change or decreased as concentration rose (implying efficiencies may have

occurred on net after the merger). However, the relationship between relative fares and concentration

was positive following mergers on the much larger set of routes served by the merging firms where

they never competed with each other prior to the merger. The authors attribute this effect to the

market-power enhancing effects of increased contact among the various rival airlines after the merger.

The increased contact may provide the rival firms with more opportunities to discipline each other's

pricing moves.

In a follow-up paper examining the same 14 mergers, Singal123 analyzes the stock price

movements of merging firms and rival firms using relatively standard stock market event study

techniques with several alternative event windows. Singal first calculates the abnormalreturns relative

to the market as a whole and the airline industry, in particular. He finds a common result - target firm

shareholders gain about 18 percent, acquiring firm shareholders gain about 1.5 percent, and the net

gain is about 4 percent. Rival firms as a group gain nothing, but the distribution of gains and losses

appears to indicate that some are harmed by improved efficiency of the merging firms whereas others

gain due to market power effects. These abnormal stock market returns for the firms involved in the
 

124 Slovin et al. is unique among airline merger event studies in that they found that airline mergers did not lead to

market power effects in the deregulated airline industry. Singal suggests that the differing results may be due to: (1)

different baselines for comparison (Singal uses close rivals in city-pair markets, whereas Slovin et al. use all other U.S.

airlines as rivals in a national airline market), and (2) Slovin examines merger attempts, not just successful mergers;

perhaps introducing unnecessary noise into the model. See Slovin, Sushka & Hudson, Deregulation, Contestability, and

Airline Acquisitions, 30 JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL ECONOMICS 231 (1991).

 

125 Morrison, Airline Mergers: A Longer View, JOURNAL OF TRANSPORT ECONOMICS AND POLICY 237

(September 1996). Morrison (p. 239) intentionally used a sparse econometric specification arguing that such a

specification avoids imputing the effects of the merger to other changes that may have been induced by the merger.

 

126 Kole & Lehn, Workforce Integration and the Dissipation of Value in Mergers, in (Kaplan ed.) MERGERS AND

PRODUCTIVITY 239, National Bureau of Economic Research Conference, University of Chicago (2000).

32

merger and their rivals are then hypothesized to depend on market concentration (a proxy for market

power) and the number of airports common to the merging firms (a proxy for the consolidation

efficiency potential of a merger). Singal finds that the merging firms’ stock market returns are perhaps

higher if they have common airports, but returns are not higher due to concentration increases. In

contrast, rival firms’ abnormal returns are higher where market concentration is higher and are lower

where more common airports exist. The author interprets his results as implying that mergers result

in both enhanced efficiency by the merged firm and increased market power, with a small and

insignificant net positive effect on the stock prices of the average rival firm. The increased market

power effects benefit the rival firms, but not the merger partners because the gains to the dominant

merging firm are dissipated by fringe expansion. Focusing on price data, Singal finds price increases

of 9 to 10 percent on the routes affected by the mergers around the event date compared to a sample

of unaffected market routes. Using these price change data, he calculates profit changes around the

time of the merger and into the future. He finds that the stock market abnormal returns are positively

correlated with the calculated short-term profit changes, implying that the stock market results

correctly anticipated changes in future cash flows.124

The Northwest/Republic, TWA/Ozark, and US Air/Piedmont mergers were revisited by

Morrison who looked at the longer-run price effects of the mergers using control routes eight years

before and after the 1986/87 mergers.125 The first two mergers involved carriers that shared hubs

(Minneapolis-St. Paul and St. Louis, respectively). In the third merger, the firms did not share a hub.

Morrison finds that for all three mergers the level of competition faced by these air carriers before the

mergers was considerably greater than that faced by other carriers on comparable control routes. Thus,

the mergers would have tended to move these carriers closer to the industry average competition level.

The average post-merger price effects varied substantially across the mergers. Prices fell 15 percent

relative to the control routes following the TWA/Ozark merger, but relative prices rose 2.5 percent in

the case of Northwest/Republic and 22.8 percent for the US Air/Piedmont merger.

Recently, Kole and Lehn126 examined the USAir/Piedmont deal from late 1987. They did not

use an econometric model or control group to allow for comparisons across other firms in the industry,

but rather take an accounting/interview approach to the case study. They find that the merger looked

like a natural fit, but that it ended badly because of culture conflicts in the two firms and because
 

127 Airline merger discussions reappeared, however, in 200 0 with proposals for a United/USAir merger and an

American/TWA deal, among others. The United/USAir transaction was withdrawn by the parties in July 2001 after

opposition from the Justice Department.

 

128 Bogue, Shortell, Sohn, Manheim, Bazzoli & Chan, Hospital Reorganization After Merger, 33 MEDICAL CARE

676 (1995).

 

129 Wicks, Meyer & Carlyn, Assessing the Early Impact of Hospital Me rgers: An Analysis of the St. Louis and

Philadelphia Markets, Economic and Social Research Institute (January 1998).

33

USAir management spread an inflated pay structure to the newly acquired employees. One

commentator opined that the virtual absence of airline mergers during the 1990s might have been

caused by a recognition of the types of irreversible integration problems discovered by Kole and

Lehn.127

Hospital Merger Case Studies

Bogue et al.

128 used a survey of surviving firms to examine the after-effects of 60 hospital

mergers that occurred between 1983 and 1988. Survey respondents were asked about pre-merger and

post-merger characteristics of the acquired and acquiring hospitals and the markets they served and

the post-merger use of the assets (in particular whether the hospital campuses both offered acute care

after the transaction). American Hospital Association data were also used to track the hospital

characteristics. The authors find that 42% of the time both hospitals retained acute care use postmerger and that another 41% of the time the acquired assets were converted to alternative inpatient

uses such as psychiatric or long-term care. The facilities were closed 17 percent of the time. There

was a much higher probability of post-merger closure or conversion if the hospitals had been directly

competitive prior to purchase and if the market generally was considered competitive. In cases where

both hospitals retained acute care services after the transaction, respondents were much less likely to

say that the hospitals were directly competitive or that the market overall was highly competitive. The

authors caution against drawing anything more than tentative conclusions fromtheir exploratory study,

but they argue that the early evidence indicates that mergers represent a means of profitably

reconfiguring and consolidating assets, whether the strategy is one of system expansion or competitor

elimination.

The consolidation of several hospitals in St. Louis and Philadelphia during the mid-1990s was

examined by Wicks et al.

129 who, like Bogue, relied heavily on a survey approach, interviewing fifteen

to twenty participants in each of the health care markets a few years after the consolidation began. In

addition to the survey information, the authors also compared time series data for several measures of

revenues (prices), output, efficiency, and capacity utilization for the hospitals in the two cities. The

authors argued that if mergers were the reason for any improvements in performance, then such

improvement should have occurred in St. Louis before it occurred in Philadelphia because the merger

activity began there a year earlier. The merger activity in both cities lead to the formation of hospital

systems of various sizes, some including 12 campuses, others as few as two or three. The authors find

that most of the trends that existed prior to the mergers continued and the mergers did not appear to
 

130 Barro & Cutler, Consolidation in the Medical Marketplace in Massachusetts, in (Kaplan ed.) MERGERS AND

PRODUCTIVITY 9, National Bureau of Economic Research Conference, University of Chicago (2000).

 

131 The Boston area consolidations were associated with a smaller number of beds, perhaps less hospitals, and perhaps

a more efficient mix of services. Some scale economies may have been achieved by the consolidations of close-by

hospital campuses (e.g., Massachusetts General/Brigham and Womens; Beth Israel/Deaconess; and the formation of the

Boston Medical Center).

34

alter the trajectory of prices or cost efficiency for the hospitals in the cities. The authors conclude,

based largely on the interview information, that hospital system formation was largely a reaction to

managed care inroads and represents an attempt to avoid further price reductions by strengthening

hospitals bargaining positions relative to that of the managed care plans. Each system attempts to be

sufficiently large that major insurers cannot provide viable benefits packages unless the system is

included. In both cities, the largest employers were characterized as largely passive observers in the

health care cost containment effort and not major factors in the consolidations. The authors do not

believe the mergers led to significant efficiencies that would not have otherwise occurred, at least so

far. They hold out some hope that such efficiencies may develop in the future as the hospitals move

further toward integration, consolidation, and facility closure. 

Consolidations of five hospitals in the Boston Metro area were examined by Barro and

Cutler.130 They first discuss the factors that have caused hospital consolidation nationally in the

hospital industryincluding: prospective payment, managed care, and technology changes (lessinvasive

procedures necessitating fewer and shorter stays as inpatients, and greater use of pharmaceutical rather

than medical therapies). These factors have lead to a vastly reduced demand for acute care hospital

stays and thus to the need for hospital consolidation and closure. The authors describe this process in

Massachusetts over the past 20 years and discuss in more detail the consolidation of hospitals in the

metropolitan Boston area into 5 major groups in the 1980s and 1990s. They present information on

human input use by hospitals in the late 1980s and characterize the mergers as being motivated by a

desire for facilities reduction (closure as acute facilities and modifications to specialty medical use),

scale economies, or networking. Although the authors describe the five consolidations, they do not

present any data regarding pre-merger versus post-merger results. Thus, the reader is left without

much information about whether the mergers worked, other than general opinions about whether the

hospital administrators viewed the mergers as achieving their goals. There is no discussion of price

changes following the mergers. The authors assume that mergers that raise post-merger market share

will enhance the firms "market power," but no evidence of that power is presented. Due to a lack of

data, the authors cannot examine post-merger scale economies or costs (with the exception of the

Atlanticare/Metro West merger), although that is presumably one of the factors driving the

consolidation. They do note that Massachusetts has had smaller cost increases than the national

average for the past 15 years, but whether that can be attributed to merger activity in Massachusetts

is debatable. In the end, you have little basis for judging the welfare effects of the mergers.

131
 

132 Vita & Sacher, The Competitive Effects of Not-for-Profit Hospital Mergers: A Case Study, 49 JOURNAL OF

INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS 63 (March 2001). Also see, Simpson, Geographic Markets in Hospital Mergers (Bureau

of Economics, Federal Trade Commission, Working Paper No. 237, February 2001) (examining aspects of the same

Santa Cruz, CA merger).

 

133 Rhoades, The Efficiency Effects of Bank Mergers: An Overview of Case Studies of Nine Mergers, 22 JOURNAL

OF BANKING AND FINANCE 273 (1998).

 

134 Calomiris argues that during merger waves, comparison of pre-merger and post-merger bank performance can

provide misleading implications if stock market data are used or if the research does not control effectively for follow-on

mergers that might undo any harm caused by an initial inefficient merger. See Calomiris, Gauging the Efficiency of Bank

Consolidation During A Merger Wave, 23 JOURNAL OF BANKING AND FINANCE 615 (1999). To avoid these

problems, Calomiris would use cross-regime comparisons of banking systems, perhaps on an international level. Based

on broad measures and several case studies, he argues that U.S. bank profit performance has improved significantly and

that markets for banking services are much more competitive in the 1990s than they were previously.

35

Unique among the hospital case studies discussed here is work by Vita and Sacher132 who

focus on pre-merger and post-merger data, rather than upon surveys of the industry participants. They

examine the 1990 merger of the two largest hospitals in the three-hospital Santa Cruz, California area.

The authors define a control group of similarly situated hospitals as well as a regression model to

control for demand and supply factors (including the hospitals’ case-mix, the percentage of patients

covered by Medicare/MediCal, and a host of other determinants) other than the merger that should

affect the price of hospital services. Using quarterly data from 1986 to 1996 on non-Medicare average

revenues, they find that the merger was associated with an increase in the market price of in-patient

services on the order of $500 to $1,000 per admission (15 to 30 percent) relative to changes at the

control hospitals. They also find no evidence that this price increase was associated with post-merger

quality improvement.

Banking Services Merger Case Studies

A previous section discussed several of the larger scale banking merger studies. Recently some

smaller scale studies have also appeared. Rhoades summarized the results of nine horizontal banking

merger studies done by several economists at the Federal Reserve.133 Using common methodologies,

the economists examined nine relatively large 1990s horizontal bank mergers to determine whether

common threads could be found among the post-merger performance of the firms. For each merger

the analyst examined costs, 16 financial ratios, econometric estimates of efficiency and scale

economies, and stock market price effects relative to control groups. Depending upon the weight you

might give to various measures of bank performance, anywhere from four to nine of the mergers were

successful. No clear patterns emerged from the nine cases other than the fact that costs were reduced

in each case and at least one measure of total efficiency was improved in every case.134
 

135 Calomiris & Karceski, Is the Bank Merger Wave of the 1990s Efficient?, in (Kaplan ed.) MERGERS AND

PRODUCTIVITY 93, National Bureau of Economic Research, Chicago (2000).

 

136 Prager, ATM Network Mergers and the Creation of Market Power, ANTITRUST BULLETIN 349 (Summer

1999).

36

Calomiris and Karceski135 discuss the consolidation of banking in the U.S. generally over the

past twenty years and argue that it has likely been efficient even if the large sample studies of banking

have so far failed to find such efficiencies. They also examine nine banking mergers from the mid1990s. The mergers were located in Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, and the Northeast. The cases

involved buy-outs of entrenched management, mergers to avoid future hostile takeovers, purchases

of specialty banks, geographic extensions, mergers to expand in-area market share or to achieve initial

entry in an area, or expand the services that could be offered to customers (e.g., “relationship” banking

offering multiple, high-margin financial products.). Most, but not all, of the acquiring firms thought

some cost savings might be forthcoming from the mergers. As with most samples of mergers in any

industry, the stock market reactions to the deals varied widely, with three receiving negative

evaluations and six positive. The biggest winner and biggest loser were clearly identified by the

market. The authors, however, place little faith in those reactions as predictions of success, in any

event. They examine available accounting information on bank performance before and after the

acquisitions to try to discern the effects of the mergers. One outstanding success appeared (First

Bank/Boulevard), where a laggard bank was brought under new vigorous management, and one

notable waste of shareholder resources occurred (First Chicago/Lake Shore) where management used

a merger to further entrench itself. Other transactions were perhaps successes in the long run (or at

least clearly not failures). One merger that did not work out in St. Louis (Roosevelt Bank) was later

remedied by another bank buying out the “bad” acquirer. The measures of success or failure are many

and varied, making it difficult to determine whether the transactions were successful and how

successful. This is a problem inherent in the exercise. There are many ways to measure firm

performance relative to control groups and unless the measures all tell a consistent story, it is hard to

make blanket statements about the success or failure of a particular merger. The authors view a

success from the firms’ vantage point and not from an overall consumer welfare perspective. On the

whole, the nine cases provide a wealth of detail, but they lead to little in the way of generalizable

insights.

Mergers in a related area - automated teller machine (ATM) shared networks, have also been

examined.136 From 1986 to 1996, the number of ATM shared networks declined from 170 to about

50. Some of the remaining networks have very large shares of regional transactions. An annual survey

conducted by a banking industry publication captured pricing and output data for four merging

networks and 14 nonmerging networks during the 1991 to 1996 period. Prager compared average

prices charged by the merging networks to those charged by nonmerging networks over the 1991 to

1996 period. Thus, experimental control was accomplished via the comparison of group means, rather

than by use of an econometric model to hold constant other factors that might have affected the costs

or demand of the networks. The comparison of the mean switch fees and interchange fees charged by

the networks to their member banks provided no evidence that fees charged by merging networks

increased relative to those charged by the nonmerging networks following the mergers. If anything,
 

137 Barton & Sherman, The Price and Profit Effects of Horizontal Merger: A Case Study, 33 JOURNAL OF

INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS 165 (December 1984). 

 

138 SCHUMANN, ROGERS & REITZES, CASE STUDIES OF THE PRICE EFFECTS OF HORIZONTAL

MERGERS (Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission, January 1992).

 

139 The size and statistical significance of the effect of this merger in titanium dioxide appears to be sensitive to the

way in which a demand factor, GNP, is entered into the equation that estimates the price of titanium dioxide.

37

the results indicated the opposite. Nor did Prager find a significant reduction in transaction growth

for the merging networks. Thus, the ATM network mergers captured by this survey did not appear to

lead to customer losses. 

Case Studies of Mergers in Other Industries

Empirically-oriented cases studies exist in a few other industries. One of the first systematic

case studies of a merger involved examination of the post-merger market performance in the Federal

Trade Commission's Xidex case.137 Xidex produced two types of "nonsilver duplicating microfilm":

diazo and vesicular. Xidex acquired a horizontal rival in each of the competing product lines; Scott

Graphics (diazo) in 1976 and Kalvar Corp. (vesicular) in 1979. Each of the acquisitions raised Xidex's

market share by about 10 percentage points in the overall nonsilver duplicating microfilm product

market. The authors find that these acquisitions caused diazo and vesicular microfilm prices to rise

more than they would have absent the merger. The Kalvar acquisition had a larger effect, possibly

because that acquisition left Xidex with a near monopoly in vesicular microfilm. (The authors control

for cost fluctuations by examining the relative winning competitive bids from GSA contracts for the

two types of microfilm, which use similar inputs.) In addition, they find that the supra-competitive

profits gained were sufficient to recoup the purchase price of the assets in two years.

In one of the first studies to use econometric techniques to control for non-merger effects,

Schumann et al.,

138 estimated the effects of mergers in titanium dioxide, cement, and corrugated

paperboard using an econometric model to control for cost and demand variations. The authors use

time series data for each market to discern the effects of the various mergers. Using generalized

reduced-form price equations, the authors find surprisingly large price effects. The merger of the 2nd

and 4th largest U.S. producers (G+W/SCM) in the titanium dioxide industry may have led to a price

increase on the order of 25 percent.

139 In the case of the Hawaiian cement merger, prices may have

fallen 23 percent following the merger of Hawaii's only two cement producers. Even though the

merger led to a "monopoly" in Hawaii, the post-merger price reduction may reflect efficiencies

achieved by the merger that were not offset by anticompetitive effects because the ease of importing

cement to the islands kept Hawaii from being a separate market for cement. The study of the

paperboard merger (Weyerhauser purchased Menasha's west coast assets) indicates that a temporary

"hold separate" remedy used in conjunction with the acquisition of one corrugating medium mill may

have failed because it deterred vertical efficiencies while allowing any adverse horizontal effect of the

merger. Prices rose 14 percent following the merger, but fell to preacquisition levels following

removal of the hold-separate agreement.
 

140 Lys & Vincent, An Analysis of Value Destruction in AT&T’s Acquisition of NCR, 39 JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL

ECONOMICS 353 (1995).

 

141 Park, Babcock & Lemke, The Impact of Railroad Mergers on Grain Transportation Markets: A Kansas Case

Study, 35 TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH 269 (1999).

 

142 The authors do not have access to negotiated prices, but rather use 1994 and 1998 data on list prices of wheat at

various locations. They do not adjust for anything else that might have happened over the 1990s that would have lead

to price or cost changes even if the mergers had never occurred. Thus, the link between the price reductions and the

mergers is tenuous.

 

143 This conclusion seems quite inconsistent with reports of major service disruptions and train crashes that occurred

following the UP/SP merger. Perhaps the disruptions occurred outside the market for wheat or were only short-run

logistics problems that were eventually solved, but the reports indicate problems that lasted over at least two years. For

critiques of the merger, see Machalaba, Ties That Bind: After Crippling Chaos, Union Pacific Can See The Proverbial

Light, Wall Street Journal, August 25, 1999, A-1; Pittman, Train Wreck: A Lesson on Megamergers at

www.antitrust.org, 8-4-99; Kwoka & White, Manifest Destiny? The Union Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroad Merger,

pp. 64-88, esp. pp. 84-86 in (Kwoka & White eds.) THE ANTITRUST REVOLUTION, ECONOMICS,

COMPETITION, AND POLICY 3rd ed. (1999); and three different customer-industry trade press reports of early 1998

problems in Conrath & Widnell, Efficiency Claims in Merger Analysis: Hostility or Humility, 7 GEORGE MASON

LAW REV. 685 (1999).

38

Examining a transaction in the computer industry, Lys and Vincent use stock market event

analysis to examine AT&T’s purchase of NCR.140 The authors examine the stock market reaction to

25 different “events” that were connected with the 1991 transaction. At the time of the merger, the

market predicted that the deal would be a loser for AT&T shareholders and the market appears to have

been correct in this instance. The authors conclude that the 1991 deal resulted in value reduction on

the order of $4 to $6 billion. One major focus of the paper is on the question of accounting

conventions used in conjunction with mergers. The authors believe that AT&T thought their

accounting choice would fool investors and thus AT&T management paid a hefty premium to be able

to use pooling of interests as opposed to purchase accounting when undertaking the transaction.

A transaction in the railroad industry has also been examined. Park, et al. compare the prices

of grain before and after two mergers in the railroad industry - the September 1995 Burlington

Northern/Santa Fe merger and the July 1996 Union Pacific/Southern Pacific merger.141

 Because

contract data on rail prices do not exist, the authors use two approaches to estimate the price effect of

the mergers. First, they use simulations to calculate the lowest network cost of shipments and to

calculate the equilibrium prices that would occur if rival firms price at variable cost (the cost data exist

from ICC records). They find that due to efficiencies from the use of more direct routes in the postmerger situation, costs would often fall as would prices (although the mergers would not always result

in lower price-cost margins). As a more direct test, the authors also examine the price spreads for

wheat in Houston and various locations in Kansas and find that the difference between the prices

(which presumably represents the transportation cost component) fell after the mergers in 44 of 52

instances.142 Based on their work and some previous literature, the authors conclude that competitive

prices are likely to result from rail mergers so long as two railroads are available to shippers.143
 

144 MERGERS AND PRODUCTIVITY, (Kaplan, ed.), National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report,

University of Chicago (2000). Many of these merger case studies were done with more objective data than were

available to the authors of the previous generation of case studies.

 

145 The authors call these case studies “clinical” studies and many of the authors previously produced the larger

sample evidence on mergers.

 

146 Cooper Industries had reportedly successfully undertaken several acquisitions and had effectively imposed its

management practices on the acquired firms. When Cooper acquired Cameron Iron Works, however, the attempted

“Cooperization” failed.

 

147 For those interested in the antitrust implications of the deals, no one seemed to find a merger that raised prices

to customers, although the cases were not selected to provide examples of that effect and the authors were not mainly

interested in finding such effects. (One commentator saw the drug mergers as anticompetitive, but the authors did not).

39

Kaplan provides case studies of mergers in several additional industries.144 Many of the studies

contained in the volume are mentioned elsewhere in this paper because they deal with hospitals,

airlines, or banking - industries with a tradition of merger studies. The conference volume, however,

covers even more ground. The various authors look in depth at over 20 recent (1985 - 1995 vintage)

mergers in hospitals in Massachusetts, tires, banks, oil field services, tile, airlines, and prescription

drugs. The goal is to look closely at a few mergers in the hope that insights obtained will help explain

results from the large sample work done on mergers and takeovers during the past 20 years.145 As

with older style case studies, the work is potentially subject to author bias, and many of the studies do

little to compare the post-merger performance with a benchmark of control firms or with an

econometric model that would allow one to predict what would have happened “but for” the merger.

On the other hand, the authors appear to bring objective data to bear on the issues when possible,

pulling together stock market data, accounting information, interviews with business decision-makers

to construct a coherent story of what happened before and after the mergers. Their main concern is

with determining whether the transactions worked for shareholders (were they profitable endeavors?)

and why they did or did not work. Many of the case studies provide examples of long term industry

responses to changing environments or technologies (hospitals, banking, tires); some are stories of

mistaken perceptions; still others are stories of merger ideas that looked good in principle, but went

bad due to failure to appreciate the “corporate culture” aspects of mergers (Piedmont/USAir). Mergers

are obviously riskier undertakings than simply buying assets. They require more planning,

understanding, and luck to pull off. Even for managements who have done several mergers, each one

appears to present new challenges and no assurance of success.146 Sometimes mergers are done simply

to make use of the firm’s excess cash flow at the expense of the shareholders (e.g., Premark’s

acquisition of Florida Tile is said to fall in this category). Kaplan concludes that technology changes

and cost shocks explain much of the merger activity in the industries.147

The smaller scale case studies provide relatively little in the way of general lessons about

merger effects, but one would not expect strong generalizations to come from studies of individual

transactions. In airlines, prices rose in many instances following mergers, but in some cases they fell

relative to what otherwise would have occurred. More efficient provision of service also seemed

associated with the airline mergers due to improved network effects. During the 1980s and 1990s,

hospital consolidations occurred as an essential part of a nationwide reduction in demand for hospital
 

148 This debate and the pre-1982 evidence are reviewed in Pautler, The Economic Basis for Broad Based Horizontal

Merger Policy, 28 ANTITRUST BULLETIN 571 (Fall 1983). For a more recent review, see Schmalensee, InterIndustry Studies of Structure and Performance, Vol. II HANDBOOK OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION (1989).

 The debate regarding the value of the traditional cross-section, multi-industry SCP empirical literature continues, with

(continued...)

40

in-patient services. The small scale studies imply that the consolidations were inevitable and perhaps

efficient, but one study found a substantial price-enhancing effect from a hospital consolidation. Small

scale banking studies found more evidence of efficiency enhancement that did the larger scale banking

studies, but the effects were not dramatically large. Perhaps the more favorable findings in the smallscale studies of bank mergers are due to the fact that bank mergers improved as time went by, with the

1990s ventures performing better than did those in the 1980s and the case studies tended to be focused

on recent transactions. The small scale studies provide a range of evidence including one utter disaster

for stockholders in AT&T's purchase of NCR. My review did not reveal an outstanding merger

success in which shareholders make large gains and customers receive substantially lower prices and

better service. Perhaps such cases exist, but they are not "news" and thus do not elicit the academic

interest of the potentially bad outcomes. Or perhaps successes can never be as dramatic as failures -

market forces tend to constrain the upside gains from good business decisions, but the downside losses

are not so well cushioned.

VII. INDIRECT EVIDENCE FROM STRUCTURE-CONDUCT-PERFORMANCE (SCP)

STUDIES

Although the traditional structure-conduct-performance evidence does not directly focus on

a sample of mergers and acquisitions, we review this evidence since it is relevant for answering the

general question, "Does market concentration seem to matter?" Unfortunately, this literature cannot

directly answer the question, "Do increases in concentration brought about by horizontal mergers

matter?"

A. Profit/Concentration Studies

Whether a relationship exists between concentration and market performance and what any

such relationship might mean has been a matter of debate for several decades. Early work in this area

focused on the relationship between concentration and profitability across many broadly defined

industries. As of 1968, the prevailing view was that a stable relationship existed between these two

variables and that the relationship implied that market power existed in many markets. This view

implied that a fairly strict review of concentration increasing mergers was appropriate. Beginning

about that time, "revisionists" in the economics profession began to raise nagging doubts about the

robustness of the relationship, the accuracy of the data upon which it was based (especially the

profitability data), and the policy implications that flowed from the empirical results. The early

revisionists effectively argued that: (1) a relationship between concentration and profits could be due

to efficiency and not market power, and (2) concentration may lead to some increased market power,

but the process, on net, leads to lower prices because it leads to lower costs.148
 

148(...continued)

some reputable economists arguing that the traditional SCP evidence based on accounting profits may be close to useless.

See Bothwell, Cooley & Hall, A New View of the Market Structure-Performance Debate, 32 JOURNAL OF

INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS 397 (June 1984). For a defense of the traditional approach, see Salinger, The

Concentration-Margins Relationship Reconsidered, MICROECONOMICS 1990, 287 (1990).

 

149 This relationship between price/cost margins and own-firm market share and rivals' market shares could imply

pervasive efficient rivalry, potential large firm dominance, or both. See Ravenscraft, Structure-Profit Relationships at

the Line of Business and Industry Level, 65 REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS 22 (February 1983) and

Kwoka & Ravenscraft, Cooperation v. Rivalry: Price-Cost Margins by Line of Business, 53 ECONOMICA 351 (1986).

Studies using the FTC's Line of Business data have not been able to distinguish effectively between efficiency and

anticompetitive explanations for the relationship between market share and price/cost margins, however.

 

150

 See Salinger, supra note 148, Salinger's price/cost margin data covering 1971 through 1984 yield the same general

results as those found by Peltzman, The Gains and Losses from Industrial Concentration, 20 JOURNAL OF LAW AND

ECONOMICS 229 (October 1977) in his landmark study of earlier years. Salinger's empirical model is not, however,

very completely specified. Similar results indicating net price reductions associated with increased concentration for

Canadian industries were obtained by Dickson, The Relationship Between Concentration and Prices and Concentration

and Costs 23 APPLIED ECONOMICS 101 (1991).

 

151 Since efficient increases in concentration can be achieved through internal expansion, Salinger, supra note 148,

at 319, argues that the burden should be placed on firms to show that horizontal mergers should not be blocked.

Peltzman, Comments on The Concentration-Margins Relationship Reconsidered, MICROECONOMICS 1990 329

(1990) argues that Salinger's evidence is more consistent with a policy that allows mergers, at least, in the absence of

some compelling reasons to fear an anticompetitive outcome.

 

152 Schmalensee, Do Markets Differ Much? 75 AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW 341 (June 1985). Using line

of business data and SIC-defined markets for 456 firms in 242 industries, Schmalensee, could explain about 20 percent

of the variation in line of business profits mainly due to industry effects. Firm effects did not exist and market share

effects were quite small. Interestingly, market concentration was negatively related to the industry level effects. Thus,

his results tend to be inconsistent with both the traditional SCP and revisionist views. For a related approach obtaining

different results (decomposing the variation in a firm's Tobin's Q reveals significant firm-level effects), see Wernerfelt

& Montgomery, Tobin's Q and the Importance of Focus in Firm Performance, 78 AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW

246 (March 1988).

41

Later researchers, many using better accounting data from the FTC's Line of Business program

and more fully-specified empirical models, found that even the existence of a relationship between

concentration and profits was questionable. These researchers found that: (1) for line of business level

data, higher concentration did not lead to higherindustry profitability; rather, larger market shares were

associated with increased firm profits; (2) increases in large rivals' market shares tended to reduce a

firm's profits;149 and (3) for industry level data over longer periods, concentration changes did lead to

price/cost margin increases over time, but costs also fell resulting in lower net consumer prices.150 The

longer term industry-level results imply that while increased concentration might have some

deleterious effects, it may be beneficial overall.151 Going further, other researchers questioned the

entire interpretation of multi-industry cross-section results, arguing that only within-industry price

studies in local markets were likely to provide useful information.

Following Schmalensee's152 lead, some profit/concentration literature has taken a different

approach by trying to decompose the source of a firm's profit variation into three components: that due
 

153 The models allow for "fixed" effects from three different sources: the firm, the firm's market share in the industry,

and the industry itself. That is, if a firm sold 25 different products in 25 different industries, one might ask whether the

firm's profit in industry y was due to special characteristics of the firm itself, the firm's market share in industry y, or

simply to the fact that it was in industry y.

 

154 Froeb & Amel, Do Firms Differ Much?, 39 JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS 23 (March 1991).

 

155 There has been a relatively recent revival of price-cost margin studies on the macroeconomic front. Researchers

interested in determining whether profit margins are pro-cyclical or counter-cyclical have undertaken studies to estimate

price-cost margins across many industries. Those margins are not measured directly, but rather, are inferred from

theoretical considerations and estimation of industry labor and capital productivity. For a recent example of this

approach covering 14 countries, see Martins, Oliveria, Scarpetta & Pilat, Mark-up Pricing, Market Structure, and the

Business Cycle, OECD Economic Studies No. 27, (1996). Also see, Ghosal, Product Market Competition and the

Industry Price-Cost Markup Fluctuations: Role of Energy Price and Monetary Changes, 18 INTERNATIONAL

JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 415 (2000) who finds that changes in price-cost margins in the more

concentrated segment of his 253 industry sample are less sensitive to business cycles than they are in the less

concentrated industries.

 

156 This is not to say that price/concentration studies are free from criticism. At a basic level, obtaining qualityadjusted transactions prices is often quite difficult. In addition, Kimmel has noted that a positive relationship between

price and concentration may be found even in perfectly competitive markets if firms in smaller markets tend to have

higher costs than firms in large markets. Thus, finding a positive relationship between price and concentration in a cross

section study may not be evidence of a competitive problem, particularly if market-specific costs cannot be accurately

measured and incorporated in the model. See Kimmel, A Fundamental Bias in Studying Effects of Concentration on

Prices, (Discussion Paper Series 91-9 Economic Analysis Group, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, August

1991). In addition, Froeb and Werden have argued that feedback from price to structure will cause price/concentration

(continued...)

42

to the firm, market concentration, and the firm's market share. This technique uses very sparse

empirical models.153 For example, Froeb and Amel154 using data for multi-bank firms in Texas during

1982 to 1987, find that neither concentration nor market share matters, but that firm effects do matter

(particular firms tend to have similar profits across many geographic markets). The authors take these

results as evidence against the traditional SCP hypothesis, but neither are the results consistent with

the revisionist view that market share is the key to explaining profitability variation.

The traditional multi-industry, cross-section, profit/concentration study, so popular in the

economics profession from the 1960s through the early 1980s appears to be largely a thing of the past,

at least among U.S. academics. The critiques of the methods used and of the data have been sufficient

to cause the focus to shift toward other, potentially more reliable, methods.155

B. Price/Concentration Studies

Because one cannot tell whether a positive relationship between concentration and profits

exists, and if it exists, whether it would be due to efficiency or market power, much of the

structure/performance research in recent years shifted toward study of the relationship between price

and concentration. If one can obtain transaction price data for homogeneous product markets, some

of the theoretical ambiguity that exists for a profit/concentration relationship does not exist for a

price/concentration relationship.156 Several studies of price/concentration relationships indicate that
 

156(...continued)

studies to be subject to simultaneous equations bias similar to that plaguing profit/concentration studies. See Evans,

Froeb & Werden Endogeneity in the Concentration-Price Relationship: Causes, Consequences, and Cures, 41

JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS 431 (December 1993). For general arguments indicating that feedback

should exist from the "toughness" of price competition to market structure, see SUTTON, SUNK COSTS AND

MARKET STRUCTURE: PRICE COMPETITION, ADVERTISING, AND THE EVOLUTION OF

CONCENTRATION (1991).

 

157 WEISS, CONCENTRATION AND PRICES (1989).

 

158 Brannman, Klein & Weiss, The Price Effects of Increased Competition in Auction Markets, 69 R EV IEW OF

ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS 24 (February 1987).

 

159 Neumark & Sharpe, Market Structure and the Nature of Price Rigidity: Evidence from the Market for Consumer

Deposits, 107 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS 657 (May 1992).

 

160 Hannan, The Functional Relationship Between Prices and Market Concentration: The Case of the Banking

Industry, (Audretsch & Siegfried eds.) EMPIRICAL STUDIES IN INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION: ESSAYS IN

HONOR OF LEONARD W. WEISS 35-59 (1992).

 

161 Hannan & Liang, Inferring Market Power from Times-series Data: The Case of the Banking Firm, 11

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 205 (June 1993).

 

162 Cyrnak & Hannan, Is the Cluster Still Valid in Defining Banking Markets? Evidence from a New Data Source,

44 ANTITRUST BULLETIN 313 (Summer 1999).

 

163 Hannan, supra note 160, for example, examines the functional relationship at different time periods and for

different bank loan and deposit products. Using an interest rate model that controls for maturity, loan size, commitment

status, bank size, SMSA population, area wages, and state business failure rates, as well as concentration, he finds the

expected general positive relationship between various measures of concentration and lending rates and the expected

negative relationship between rates paid on deposits and concentration. The relationships do not appear to be smooth

(continued...)

43

prices are higher where concentration is higher or the number of sellers is lower. Such studies exist

in a variety of industries, including banking, airline, cement, tax exempt bond underwriting, food

retailing, gasoline retailing, ocean shipping, hospitals, and natural gas. Additional evidence of the

effect also comes from certain auction markets.

Weiss157 examines several price/concentration studies overthe past twenty-five years in several

industries and with one exception finds 1 to 5 percent price increases associated with ten percentage

point increases in concentration. In one of the studies Weiss reviews, Brannman et al.

158 find a

significant positive effect of the number of bidders on buying price (a negative effect on selling price)

in auction markets for oil tracts, timber, and bond underwriting.

Several studies beyond those listed by Weiss have also found a significant positive relationship

between concentration and price. For example, in the banking industry, numerous researchers (e.g.,

Neumark and Sharpe,159 Hannan,160 Hannan and Liang,161 and Cyrnak and Hannan162) have found that

increased concentration is associated with a small, but statistically significant, increase in bank rates

charged on loans or a decrease in rates paid by banks to deposit customers.163 The relationship
 

163(...continued)

and monotonic, however, but rather change over the range of concentration, sometimes in surprising ways.

 

164

 See Berger, Demsetz & Strahan, The Consolidation of the Financial Services Industry: Causes, Consequences,

and Implications for the Future, 23 JOURNAL OF BANKING & FINANCE 135 (1999).

 

165

 See Borenstein, supra note 118.

 

166 Morrison & W inston, The Dynamics of Airline Pricing and Competition, 80 AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW

389 (May 1990).

 

167

 See Brueckner, Dyer & Spiller, supra note 119.

 

168 Kim & Singal, Mergers and Market Power: Evidence from the Airline Industry, 83 AMERICAN ECONOMIC

REVIEW 549 (June 1993).

 

169 Singal, Airline Mergers and Competition: An Integration of Stock and Product Price Effects. 69 JOURNAL OF

BUSINESS 233 (April 1996).

 

170 Brueckner, Dyer and Spiller find that moving from monopoly to two rivals reduces fares by 7 percent, while

moving from two to three firms reduces prices an additional 3 percent. The addition of rivals beyond three has minimal

effects. Evans, Froeb and Werden examine biases in OLS-estimated price/concentration relationships and argue that

feedback effects and measurement errors are likely to cause those estimates to be biased downward. Using airline pricing

data for 1984-1988 for 1,000 city-pairs, they find that OLS estimates of the effect of market concentration on fares may

be biased downward by as much as 150 to 250 percent. Thus, prior research that does not effectively adjust for such

biases could significantly underestimate the effects of concentration increases. See Evans, Froeb & Werden, Endogeneity

in the Concentration-Price Relationship: Causes, Consequences, and Cures, 41 JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL

ECONOMICS 431 (December 1993).

 

171 Evans & Kessides, Localized Market Power in the U.S. Airline Industry, 75 REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND

STATISTICS 66 (February 1993).

 

172 Morris, The Relationship Between Industrial Sales Prices and Concentration of Natural Gas Pipelines (Bureau

of Economics, Federal Trade Commission, Working Paper No. 168, November 1988).

44

between concentration and rates paid to deposit customers in banking may be a bit weaker in the 1990s

data than it was in prior periods,164 but it still exists. In the airline industry, Borenstein,165 Morrison

and Winston,166 Brueckner, Dyer, and Spiller,167 Kim and Singal,168 and Singal169 all find that air fares

are higher in more concentrated air travel markets.

170 Somewhat different results in airline markets

were obtained by Evans and Kessides171, however, who examined the fares charged for single carrier

coach seats in 1988 on the top 1000 airline routes using a fixed effects model that accounts for routespecific effects. Unlike previous authors (who did not use a fixed-effects estimation approach), they

find that route market share and route concentration are unimportant, but that airport market share and

airport concentration significantly affect fares. According to the estimates, a market share two

standard deviations above the mean is associated with coach fares that are 13 percent higher. In the

natural gas transportation industry, Morris172 finds that prices paid by industrial gas buyers tend to

increase by 15 percent if the number of sellers in a local market falls by one. (The average number of

sellers in such markets is 2.2). Similarly, in the ocean shipping industry where individual freight
 

173 CLYDE & REITZES, THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COLLUSION UNDER ANTITRUST IMMUNITY - THE

CASE OF LINER SHIPPING CONFERENCES (Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission, December 1995).

 

174 Rosenbaum, Efficiency v. Collusion: Evidence Cast in Cement, 9 REVIEW OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

379 (1994).

 

175 These cement industry results seem very consistent with Peltzman’s (1977) argument that net efficiency increases

stem from increases in concentration. Prices and costs fall as concentration changes, but margins rise. The author

estimates simultaneous equations for cement output and price. The model produces a few counterintuitive results. In

the price equation, increased wages are found to reduce price. In the output (demand) equation, the price of asphalt, a

substitute for cement, obtains a negative sign. Otherwise, the results appear reasonable.

 

176

 See Keeler, Melnick & Zwanziger, The Changing Effects of Competition on Non-profit and For-profit Hospital

Pricing Behavior, 18 JOURNAL OF HEALTH ECONOMICS 69 (January 1999); Connor, Feldman & Dowd, The

Effects of Market Concentration and Hospital Mergers on Hospital Costs and Prices, 5 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

OF THE ECONOMICS OF BUSINESS 159 (1998); and Kessler & McClellan, Is Hospital Competition Socially

Wasteful? (undated mimeo, Stanford University, October 1998). Gaynor & Haas-Wilson, Change, Consolidation and

Competition in Health Care Markets, 13 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 141 (Winter 1999) provide a

broader overview of recent evidence arguing that most hospital mergers are likely to be efficient, but that those in

particularly concentrated markets may be welfare-reducing. For an opposing view and a critique of the concentration

data used in the studies noted above, see Lynk & Neumann, Price and Profit, 18 JOURNAL OF HEALTH

ECONOMICS 99 (January 1999).

 

177 MacDonald, Demand, Information, and Competition: Why Do Food Prices Fall at Seasonal Demand Peaks?

48 JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS 27 (March 2000).

 

178 Lynk, Interpreting Rising Concentration: The Case of Beer, 57 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS 43 (January

1984). Consistent with Lynk's view, Tremblay and Tremblay suggest that horizontal mergers in the beer industry may

have been motivated by a survival instinct that placed brewing assets in the hands of the most efficient managers. See

(continued...)

45

carriers are often affiliated through associations called conferences, Clyde and Reitzes173 find that

increases in market concentration on a route are associated with slightly higher freight rates, but higher

conference market shares do not seem to be directly associated with higher freight rates. Likewise,

Rosenbaum found a positive price concentration relationship in local cement markets from 1974 to

1989.174 Cement-making technology improved over this period as new, larger, more efficient plants

were brought on line. The author finds that while long-term movements to the new, larger scale

cement-making technology lead to significant price and cost reductions, the associated increases in

seller concentration also caused producer margins to rise. Consumers only obtained two-thirds of the

cost reduction in the form of lower prices.175 The recent literature on hospital pricing (with one

exception) reports evidence that market concentration increases are associated with higher prices,176

and a recent paper on consumer food products finds that pricing behavior varies substantially with

concentration as “sales” during peak seasons are less deep for those products where market

concentration is higher.177

On the other side of the ledger, Lynk finds that concentration increases over time in the beer

industry were associated with declines in the price premiums of larger brewers and with output

increases.178 Dunne and Roberts179 find no relationship between the number of rivals and pricing of
 

178(...continued)

Tremblay & Tremblay, The Determinants of Horizontal Acquisitions: Evidence from the U.S. Brewing Industry, 37

JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS 21 (September 1988).

 

179

 Dunne & Roberts, Costs, Demand, and Imperfect Competition as Determinants of Plant-Level Output Prices,

(Audresch & Siegfried eds.) EMPIRICAL STUDIES IN INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF

LEONARD W. WEISS 13-33 (1992).

 

180 Dunne and Roberts do find a close relationship between prices and average costs, leading them to conclude that

the market is competitive and that profits have not simply been eroded by entry as might occur in a model of

monopolistic competition. They suggest that markets for bakery bread are so easy to enter that the number of rivals is

never likely to matter.

 

181 Newmark, Price and Seller Concentration in Cement: Effective Oligopoly or Misspecified Transportation Costs?

60 ECONOMIC LETTERS 243 (1998).

 

182 ANDERSON, A REVIEW OF STRUCTURE PERFORMANCE STUDIES IN GROCERY RETAILING (Bureau

of Economics, Federal Trade Commission, 1990).

 

183 Newmark, A New Bottle for the Profits-Concentration Wine: A Look at Prices and Concentration in Grocery

Retailing (Raleigh, North Carolina: North Carolina State, September 1989).

 

184 Cotterill, A Response to the Federal Trade Commission/Anderson Critique of Structure-Performance Studies in

Grocery Retailing in ( Cotterill, ed.) COMPETITIVE STRATEGY IN THE FOOD SYSTEM (Westview Press, 1993)

provides a response to Anderson's review. Also see, Marion, Competition in Grocery Retailing: The Impact of a New

Strategic Group on BLS Price Increases, 13 REVIEW OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 381 (1998), who finds a

positive correlation between changes in price and changes in concentration using 1977 to 1992 data for 25 cities after

adjusting for cost changes and service quality. Similarly, in a later study Cotterill finds a positive correlation between

price and concentration in 34 Southwestern cities in 1982. See Cotterill, Market Power and the Demsetz Quality

Critique: An Evaluation for Food Retailing, 15 AGRIBUSINESS 101 (1999).

 

185 Bresnahan & Reiss, Entry and Competition in Concentrated Markets, 99 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL

ECONOMY 977 (1991).

46

bread by bakeries,180 and Newmark finds that the relationship between price and concentration in

cement may be due to an error in specifying transportation costs rather than to avoidable

concentration.181 In addition, Anderson182 and Newmark183 review the literature on the relationship

between concentration and price in the grocery retailing industry. Neither author finds that the

relationship has been convincingly demonstrated.184 

In a unique study of market structure and implied profit margins, Bresnahan and Reiss185

examine the relationships between the numbers of firms, market size, and competition in five retail

and professional industries that tend to be concentrated in localized markets. The data apply to

isolated towns in the Western U.S. and the industries include doctors, dentists, druggists, tire dealers,

and plumbers. They find that competitive conduct changes quickly and substantially when entry

occurs, with the main effects occurring after the entry of the second or third firm. Further entry is less

eventful, and three to five firms appears sufficient to reach an equilibrium. This result is generally

consistent with that found in the experimental economics literature. The study is a very inventive use

of cross-section data on market structures, population, and income in small markets to derive
 

186 Bresnahan and Reiss would ideally like to examine the decline in accurately calculated price/cost margins as entry

occurs in well-defined markets. Because they do not have such time series data (and are not sure it could be calculated),

they combine cross-section data on numbers of firms, and potential demand (based on population and area demographics)

with inventive use of theory to derive implications about price/cost margins and entry patterns.

 

187

 MUELLER, THE DETERMINANTS OF PERSISTENT PROFITS (Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade

Commission, 1983).

 

188 MUELLER, PROFITS IN THE LONG RUN (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 

 

189 Pakes, Mueller's Profits in the Long Run, 18 RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS 319 (Summer 1987). Mueller's

work was done with the FTC's 1950 and 1972 Corporate Patterns data. A firm's market share was an amalgam of several

lines of business and the models used did not control for many factors that might affect profits or market shares over time.

Mueller did, however, use control groups to attempt to account for such changes.

 

190 McGahan & Porter, The Persistence of Shocks to Profitability, 81 REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND

STATISTICS 143 (February 1999).

47

implications about market power and entry over time. Because all the results are implications using

the “available” data (the model has to allow you to derive implications about what the “right” data

would have looked like), the study is not as convincing as it might otherwise be.186

C. Other Indirect Evidence

While expanded evidence on the effects of concentration on price is one advance in the

empirical literature in the mid-1980s and 1990s, other indirect evidence on the potential effect of

mergers may also be gleaned from studies focusing on the effects of market shares on industry

performance or of concentration on productivity or efficiency measures. Fairly recently, empirical

evidence has also emerged regarding the effects of multi-market contact on firm performance. 

Mueller187, for example, shows that for a sample of 472 firms, profit levels seemed to persist

over the 1949-1973 period. That is, high profit firms retained those high profit rates and low profit

firms remained in the low profit category more often than one would expect if competition existed and

firms were able to mimic other successful firms. Mueller188 indicated that concentration itself was

unimportant in explaining profits, but that the relationship between market share and profitability is

industry-specific. Mueller finds that market share matters in industries that are advertising- or patentintensive, but not in other industries.189

McGahan and Porter expand upon Mueller’s analysis, by examining the persistence of changes

in profits.190 The authors use 1981-1994 Compustat business segment profitability data to examine

the sources of shocks to firms’ profits. The conceptual argument is that if shocks are persistent due to

firm effects, then the persistence may be due to firm efficiency. If, however, shocks tend to persist due

to industry effects, then the most likely explanation is that rivals are unable to mimic the profitable

firm and entry barriers support that persistence. The authors use a regression model to assign the

persistence of profits to one of three sources: the business segment, firm, or industry. They find that
 

191 CAVES & BARTON, EFFICIENCY IN U.S. MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES (1990).

 

192 CAVES et al., INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY IN SIX NATIONS (1992).

 

193 Although market concentration appears to be important across the six nations as a group, Caves & Barton, supra

note 191, at 111 and 151, are not confident that competition is a particularly significant force driving improved efficiency

in the U.S. sample.

 

194 Berger & Hannan, The Efficiency Cost of Market Power in the Banking Industry: A Test of the “Quiet Life” and

Related Hypotheses, 80 REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS 454 (August 1998).

 

195 For a description of the distribution-free estimation approach and how it differs from the stochastic efficient

frontier approach, see Berger, Distribution-Free Estimates of Efficiency in the U.S. Banking Industry and Tests of the

Standard Distributional Assumptions, 4 JOURNAL OF PRODUCTIVITY ANALYSIS 261 (1993). The distributionfree approach makes use of time series data for each bank to estimate efficiency in a way that does not require

assumptions about the distributions of the error terms in the calculation of efficiency. Cross section analysis using

efficient frontier techniques, on the other hand, requires that assumptions be made about the distributions to disentangle

error due to inefficiency from error due to randomness effects.

48

industry, firm, and business segment effects on profit persistence are all substantial, but industry

effects are larger than the other components. Business segment and firm effects appear to be much

more important for explaining variance from the norm in profits, but the persistence of that divergence

from the norm is explained best by industry effects. 

Rather than examining profits or prices, Caves and Barton191 and Caves et al.

192 examine the

relationship between market concentration and technical efficiency. They use 1977 plant-level input

and output data to estimate stochastic frontier production functions for manufacturing establishments

in six nations. After obtaining estimates for the level of technical efficiency or inefficiency of each

plant, the authors search for the determinants of that inefficiency via regression analysis. Although

the results vary considerably across nations and the international comparisons are unreliable, the

authors suggest that the results are reliable for examining the determinants of interindustry differences

in technical efficiency within one nation. Two fairly consistent results are found. First, increased

domesticconcentration is associated with reduced technical efficiency193 and, second, largerplantscale

improves efficiency in most nations. Other (weaker) evidence indicates that plant-level diversity may

reduce efficiency, particularly in the United States.

The banking literature provides yet another source of indirect evidence on the effects of

mergers. For example, Berger and Hannan194 examine the relationship between cost efficiency and

market concentration in the banking industry during the 1980s. Using a "distribution free" translog

cost estimation technique,195 they find (as had prior researchers) that efficiency was fairly low in the

industry generally; the average bank was only 70 percent as efficient as the most efficient banks. After

estimating an efficiency level for each bank, the authors regress the efficiency level on variables

measuring market concentration, ownership status, takeover likelihood, bank branching regulation

status, five regional dummies, and four size class dummies. The new result they obtain is that

efficiency was lower when concentration was higher. The authors find this result regardless of the

approach they use to measure efficiency, regardless of the particular way concentration enters the
 

196 This banking evidence may not be very good indirect evidence of the effects of mergers because during the period

when banking mergers were common, local market concentration tended to fall. This occurred because many mergers

were not horizontal in nature, but rather were market extension mergers.

 

197 Fernandez & M arin, Market Power and Multimarket Contact: Some Evidence from the Spanish Hotel Industry,

46 JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS 301 (March 1998).

 

198 Evans & Kessides, Living by the Golden Rule: Multimarket Contact in the U.S. Airline Industry 109

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS 341 (1994); Jans & Rosenbaum, Multimarket Contact and Pricing:

Evidence from the U.S. Cement Industry, 15 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 391-

412 (1996); and Pilloff, Multimarket Contact in Banking, 14 REVIEW OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 163

(1999).

49

model, and regardless of the estimation technique (OLS versus 2SLS). The magnitude of their

preferred result, however, is hard to believe - they find efficiency losses due to concentration on the

order of 8 to 32 percent compared to banks in unconcentrated markets. The authors obtained much

smaller, although still significant, effects of concentration when using an older form of estimation

(efficient frontier estimation). Among other results, the authors found that the threat of takeover

improved the level of efficiency in banks and efficiency was higher in Eastern banks, in markets where

branching was limited, and in small and large banks (mid-size banks were less efficient). The authors

note (p. 464) that the common finding that mergers have not led to efficiency improvements may be

driven by the fact that concentration increases tend to lead to cost inefficiency.196

Finally, one additional source of indirect evidence comes from studies examining multi-market

contract. To the extent mergers increase the frequency with which rivals compete with each other in

various local markets, they may alter the incentives of the firms to compete. Multi-market contact

may allow more options for strategic behavior thereby reducing incentives for sharp price competition

in one local market due to fear of retaliation in another local market. Fernandez and Marin197, for

example, examine 2,200 3-star or better hotels in Spain. About 40 percent of all such hotels are

members of chains. The authors regress the price of a high season double room with bath on the

number of stays in the city in 1994, local wages, distance to the nearest within-category rival, market

concentration, hotel quality categories, hotel age, and extent of multi-market contact (MMC). The

independent variables other than concentration all obtain significant coefficients. They find that prices

for rooms are higher in those local markets whose firms are subject to more contact with rival firms

in other local markets. Failure to consider multi-market contact biases the coefficient on concentration

downward and inclusion of the MMC variable at least causes the concentration coefficient to reach

marginal significance. Other studies of multi-market contact in airlines, cement, and banking have

also found some effect.198

VIII. EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS EVIDENCE

Another source of indirect evidence on the effects of mergers comes from the economics
 

199 For broader reviews, see Plott, An Updated Review of Industrial Organization: Applications of Experimental

Methods, (Schmalensee & Willig eds.) Volume II, HANDBOOK OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 1111 (1989),

and Wellford, Antitrust: Results from the Laboratory, in Special Volume on MARKET POWER IN THE

LABORATORY, RESEARCH IN EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS Vol. 9, (Isaac & Holt eds.) (forthcoming, 2001).

 

200 Smith & Williams, The Boundaries of Competitive Price Theory: Convergence, Expectations, and Transaction

Costs, 1 ADVANCES IN BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS 31 (1989).

 

201 Single-seller market experiments in which buyer demand is simulated often achieve a monopoly equilibrium.

Where human subjects provide the demand, the markets less often exhibit a monopoly equilibrium. Whether a market

experiment involving a single-seller results in a competitive or above competitive price seems to depend on the ability

of buyers to reduce their demand below its “true” level if "the price is not right."

 

202 One recent paper indicates that two competing bidders may not be enough to reach a competitive equilibrium in

a Bertrand bidding game, but four is enough. See Dufwenberg & Gneezy, Price Competition and Market Concentration:

An Experimental Study, 18 JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 7 (2000).

 

203 Davis & Holt, Market Power and Mergers in Laboratory Markets with Posted Prices 25 RAND JOURNAL OF

ECONOMICS 467 (1994).

50

laboratory.199 The economics lab provides a setting in which economic hypotheses can be tested under

controlled conditions. If an economic theory fails to predict behavior in relatively simple laboratory

settings (where, under the conditions specified in the theory, subjects take on the roles of buyers and

sellers and are given financial incentives that attempt to mirror those in "real" markets), the

applicability of the theory to more complex situations becomes suspect.

One general result from experimental analysis is that variations in the rules of exchange and

the amount of information from one market setting to another invariably causes market performance

to change (particularly when the number of buyers and sellers is small). A stark example using pure

one-seller markets helps to make this clear. Smith and Williams200 found that when only one seller

exists, markets following the rules of exchange of large organized stock exchanges (double auctions)

still converge to and stabilize at the perfectly competitive equilibrium. In contrast, if only one seller

exists in a market that seems closer to traditional retailing (where the sellers post a "take-it-or-leave-it"

price), the market more often achieves a price that is above the competitive price.201

Perhaps more important for day-to-day antitrust work is the fairly common finding that across

a wide range of market settings, four sellers and four buyers are enough to reach competitive outcomes

even in experiments that do not allow new entry. The result appears to hold most strongly when

buyers and sellers do not have good information about the actions of the other market participants.202

The "four is enough" maxim may not always hold, however. Davis and Holt203 have shown, for

example, that if one of the four firms has potential market power (i.e., it can unilaterally and profitably

increase price), anticompetitive performance can occur in posted-offer markets. In their experiment,

the anticompetitive effects primarily arise from the increased incidence of tacit collusion in which
 

204 The impact of increased concentration on market performance is not as significant as the effect from increased

market power (i.e., market dominance). At this point, it is unclear whether Davis & Holt's, supra note 208, result is due

to the market power of one firm or whether it is due to the fact that no excess capacity exists at the equilibrium in their

experiment. Various experimental outcomes appear to be sensitive to the existence of (or lack of ) excess capacity in

the experimental market equilibrium.

 

205 Binger, Hoffman, Libecap & Shachat, An Experimetric Study of the Cournot Model, (University of Arizona,

Working Paper 92-13, 1992).

 

206 Holt & Davis, The Effects of Non-Binding Price Announcements on Posted-Offer Markets, 34 ECONOMIC

LETTERS 307-310 (1990).

 

207 Complete information in the laboratory generally refers to having information on the incentives of the buyers and

sellers (their payout functions) and information about the previous decisions of both the buyers and sellers.

 

208 Wellford, Horizontal Mergers: Concentration and Performance, TAKEOVERS AND HORIZONTAL

MERGERS: POLICY AND PERFORMANCE (Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Arizona, 1990). Also see Wellford,

Antitrust: Results from the Laboratory, in Special Volume on MARKET POWER IN THE LABORATORY,

RESEARCH IN EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS Vol. 9, (Isaac & Holt eds.) (forthcoming, 2001).

 

209 The experimental design begins with Cournot quantity choice markets with homogeneous products where entry

and antitrust enforcement are absent. The results imply that four firms is enough to reach a competitive outcome even

without the threat of entry or antitrust to discipline the market.

51

"signals" are sent between rival firms strictly through their pricing moves.204

This result leads us to one other general finding in experimental markets: the amount and

timing of information seems to matter. Different types of signals can lead to differing outcomes and

the outcomes are fairly sensitive to minor alterations in the design of the experiment. For example,

Binger, et al.205 find that explicit discussions among competitors about price facilitates collusion in

some types of laboratory markets, while Holt and Davis suggest that nonbinding trade-press

announcements of expected prices do not tend to lead to price increases.206 The only conclusion

coming from this line of research is that complete information tends to lead to collusive outcomes

while incomplete information leads more readily to competitive (or noncooperative) outcomes.

207 If

these common results could be extended to naturally occurring markets, one would be most concerned

about monopoly outcomes in posted-price markets, where the number of sellers was small and the

information among the sellers was perfect. In other markets, one would tend to be less concerned

about extreme monopoly outcomes.

One final piece of relevant experimental literature directly examines mergers. Wellford208

examined the effects of horizontal mergers in both concentrated and unconcentrated markets. The

author examined markets with eleven firms in which the post-merger Herfindahl-Hirschman Indexwas

1150 and markets with five firms in which the post-merger HHI was 2800. The experiment allowed

for scale economies in some markets and not in others, so the merger could lead to cost reductions in

the scale economies treatment.209 The author found no significant evidence of price increasing effects

from the merger even in the concentrated markets where no cost savings resulted from the merger.

The results also indicated that in both market structures any cost savings arising from mergers are
52

passed on to consumers. Thus, these experiments imply that efficiencies would tend to dominate any

potential anticompetitive effects of increased concentration.

Although the economic laboratory cannot replicate the broad range of factors that exist in the

business world, it does provide an innovative setting in which to examine antitrust issues. As the

evidence continues to accumulate, it will help build a rigorous empirical foundation for our

understanding of markets that can then be applied to the study of naturally occurring markets and

perhaps to merger policy.

IX. CONCLUSION

The empirical literature in economics provides a variety of approaches to the study of mergers

and acquisitions. The direct approaches include: (1) studies that use stock market data to determine

the effects of an acquisition event on the merging firms and their rivals with an eye toward ultimately

determining the welfare effects of the transaction (such studies may involve individual transactions

or combine the analysis of many deals across industries); (2) large, multi-industry studies that review

the accounting/finance performance measures of firms before and after the mergers adjusting for

industry-wide or economy-wide effects; (3) studies of one or several mergers using a mixture of stock

market returns, executive interviews, financial ratios, and pre-merger and post-merger accounting

analysis to determine the effects of the mergers (particularly on shareholders); (4) studies of one or

several mergers in a particular industry using econometric techniques to identify the changes in market

price, output, and product quality that occurred as a result of the merger; and (5) studies of the effects

of leveraged buy-outs on labor, investment, and other factors of interest.

Stock market studies consistently show significant gains to target firm shareholders and little

or no gain to acquiring firm shareholders around the time that the mergers and acquisitions occur. The

net effect on shareholder value appears to be positive, but small; being somewhat larger for hostile

mergers financed with cash than for friendly mergers financed with stock.

Event studies using stock market data to focus on the market power aspects of mergers

typically show gains to the shareholders of rival firms when mergers are announced, but no significant

losses to the same shareholders when these mergers are challenged. In the mid-1980s, many

economists interpreted this pattern of returns as evidence of the efficiency of the challenged mergers.

More recent research, however, has provided alternative explanations for that pattern of returns,

implying that the earlier interpretations may have been premature.

Large scale studies of mergers based on pre-merger and post-merger accounting/finance

measures have not provided clear answers to questions about the efficiency and market power effects

of mergers and acquisitions. The large scale multi-industry studies tend to show that many mergers
 

210 Based on work by Ravenscraft and Scherer, Kaplan and Wiesbach, Dickerson et al., and Sirower, mergers “fail”

35% to 75% of the time (“success” in these studies is variously defined, but it always entails survival, profitability,

retention of the assets, and sometimes requires that the merger outperform returns to alternative investments). In

interpreting the large scale evidence on mergers one must consider the nature of mergers. They have much less

predictable outcomes than do most other business investment projects. The fact that a sizeable percentage of mergers

do not ultimately lead to positive outcomes (and that some appear to have been spectacular disasters) should probably

not be too surprising. Whether this failure rate is “too high” depends on your view of the nature of business activity.

See Ravenscraft & Scherer, MERGERS, SELL-OFFS, AND ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY (1987); Kaplan & Weisbach,

The Success of Acquisitions: Evidence from Divestitures, 47 JOURNAL OF FINANCE 107 (March 1992); Dickerson,

Gibson & Tsakalotos, The Impact of Acquisitions on Company Performance: Evidence from a Large Panel of UK Firms,

49 OXFORD ECONOMIC PAPERS 344 (1997); Sirower, THE SYNERGY TRAP: HOW COMPANIES LOSE THE

ACQUISITION GAME (1997).

53

and acquisitions were not successful.210 It is hard to know what to make of the findings, they may

confirm the obvious - that many risky business decisions turn out to be errors after the fact.

Unfortunately, these studies cannot tell us whether mergers and acquisitions were efficient on an ex

ante basis. Indeed, stock market reactions at the time of the conglomerate merger boom (which many

observers see as an error in hindsight) imply that the mergers were seen as value enhancing by

investors. The large scale studies that attempt to estimate productivity changes following asset

transfers also find gains from such activity, but how much of that is due to mergers as opposed to nonmerger plant transfers is unclear. The single-industry studies of multiple mergers in hospitals indicate

that mergers may be associated with cost reductions, although price enhancing effects are found if

concentration is sufficiently high. The large-scalebanking industry merger evidence also indicates that

there are certain efficiency gains (based on product mix enhancements) associated with mergers,

although the small and persistent adverse price effect still appears in the 1990s studies and direct cost

reduction effects of mergers are not consistently observed. Review of the brewing industry mergers

indicates that merger activity may have facilitated asset reorganization in an efficient manner.

An alternative line of research uses data from both before and after the merger and applies

econometric techniques to estimate the effects of particular mergers. The econometric case studies

show that mergers and acquisitions matter, but they do not always matter in the same way -- some

appear to cause price increases, while others are associated with price reductions. To date, we have

seen a number of such studies in airlines, banking, and hospitals indicating that mergers in those

industries may have price enhancing effects (although some also were associatedwith cost reductions).

In addition, evidence from the soft drink bottling industry indicates that certain consolidations of

competing soft drink brands led to higher prices and reduced output. On the other hand, mergers in

relatively highly concentrated cement, and corrugated medium markets were associated with price

reductions. When more such studies exist in a wider variety of industries, they may be useful in

identifying the set of factors that determine whether a merger is likely to have a beneficial or

detrimental effect.

The recent merger literature also indicates that there may be firm-specific effects from mergers

on industry pricing. That is, characteristics of the acquiring firm may matter even if the market

structure is unaffected by the merger. For example, some research indicated that certain takeovers in
 

211 LBO activity by the Haft family in certain grocery markets may have caused competition to become “softer” after

the LBO occurred. See Chevalier, Capital Structure and Product-Market Competition: Empirical Evidence from the

Supermarket Industry, AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW 415 (June 1995).

54

grocery retailing, that did not alter the structure of the local markets, still lead to higher prices.211 Other

work on bank mergers has found effects of the firm buying other banks even where the structure of the

banking market did not change. Similar results were found for California hospital mergers. What this

evidence might mean is unclear, but it raises one more area of research indicating that market structure

alone does not seem to tell the whole story regarding merger effects.

Less direct evidence on the role of mergers and acquisitions comes from the structure-conductperformance literature. Although the literature does not focus on merger effects, it does provide some

information about the effects of market concentration on profits and prices. The profit/concentration

studies using line-of-business accounting rates of return to measure performance do not support the

standard structure-conduct-performance paradigm. These studies tend to find that increased

concentration is not related to higher profitability. Further, this literature implies that if anything

drives market performance it is probably large market shares, not market concentration. On the other

hand, severalstudies of differing industries using price to measure performance suggest that increasing

concentration may indeed lead to higher prices. This price evidence, while not without its own

weaknesses, is probably more reliable than is the profit-based evidence.

Finally, we also briefly discussed evidence from the economics laboratory where economic

theories can be put to more exacting tests. While many results are sensitive to the particulars of the

experiment, two common results have emerged: (1) four firms seems to be enough to approach a

competitive equilibrium in most (but not all) experimental markets, and (2) in markets with a small

number of competitors, information among the players does seem to matter with more complete

information leading to a higher probability of a collusive (monopoly) outcome.

The data appendix lists various information on merger and acquisition activity. Some of these

data reveal general trends in mergers and aggregate concentration. Other data relate more directly to

Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice activity in the merger area (e.g., merger filings

under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act and FTC and DOJ requests for additional information concerning the

merger). A few comments regarding the data are contained in the appendix.
 

212 Merger activity may have been greater in the period around 1900, when industrial consolidation occurred without

the current constraints imposed by federal and state governments.

 

213 Andrade & Stafford, Investigating the Economic Role of Mergers (mimeo, Harvard Business School, 1999) note

that the industries in which mergers occurred over the past twenty five years changed markedly from period to period.

Mergers in the 1970s and 1980s were associated with excess capacity in an industry, whereas this relationship reversed

in the 1990s when mergers tended to occur more often in industries where demand was growing quickly. Jovanovic &

Rousseau, Mergers and Technological Change: 1885-1998 (mimeo, University of Chicago, 2001), focus on technology

shifts as the key factor causing merger activity to change across firms and industries.

 

214 This Table is an updated version of Table 5 found in Eckard, The Impact of the 1980's Merger Movement on U.S.

Industrial Concentration, 40 ANTITRUST BULLETIN 397 (Summer 1995). In that article, Eckard argued that

aggregate concentration did not rise during the 1980s, nor did concentration in more narrowly defined markets. Using

a Brookings data set, he found that concentration by industry, as measured by HHI or CRi, rose relatively little (about

2 or 3 percent) generally and rose little even in those industries that experienced considerable merger activity.

55

DATA APPENDIX

The data on general merger activity levels are presented in Table 1 and Figures 1 and 2. These

data indicate that markets for corporate assets were remarkably active over the last twenty years, with

major merger waves occurring in the 1980s and 1990s. Depending on whether you care to measure

the number of deals or the value of the assets transferred, you might think the 1980s wave peaked at

different times - either in 1987 or 1989. Regardless of the measure you use, however, it is clear that

merger activity was historically high from 1985 to 1989. That wave came to an abrupt halt in late

1989, and a new wave began to form in 1992 or 1993. This new 1990s wave took asset transfer

activity to levels not seen before.212 As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, the dollar value of

U.S. merger activity (as measured by MergerStat) hit 15% in the late 1990s.

Tables 2 and 3 indicate the industries where mergers have been most frequent in the past

year.213 Among the leading industries in year 2000 were computer-related hardware and software,

financial intermediaries, and communication and broadcasting. In dollar value, merger activity was

also significant in the oil & gas industry, although the absolute number of transactions was not large.

The substantial merger and acquisition activity of the last several decades did not, however,

lead to a significant increase in the share of assets held by the largest firms. As Tables 4 and 4a

indicate, whether measured by assets or value added, manufacturing concentration has risen only

mildly or fallen over the past twenty years. Table 4 provides a measure of aggregate concentration in

manufacturing assets for the top 100 and 200 firms. Over the entire period for which we have data,

1974 to 1998, the increases were 5.0% and 3.4%, respectively. Table 4a provides a slightly different

measure of aggregate concentration based on value added for several firm groupings.214 For those

categories, aggregate concentration declined by 2.9% to 4.8% from 1977 through 1992.

The FTC has collected statistics on merger activity over the past twenty years in connection

with its Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) merger reporting program. Under the program, firms are required

to file their intention to merge if the transaction exceeds various thresholds for size and significance.

Since 1978, most transactions over $15 million in value had to file. Recently (February 2001), that
 

215 For a discussion of the possible effects of the 1986 Tax Act, see Wood, General Utilities Repeal: Injecting New

Levies into M&A, MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS 44 (January/February 1987); Gleckman & Weiss, How Tax

Reform Will Cool Takeover Fever, Business Week , September 22, 1986; Moore & Silvia, The ABCs of the Capital

Gains Tax, 242 CATO POLICY ANALYSIS 19 (October 1995); and Auerbach & Slemrod, The Economic Effects of

the Tax Reform Act of 1986, 35 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE (June 1997) at p. 613.

 

216 The demise of the junk bond market is recounted in Guillemin, 198 9: A Turning Point in the Acquisitions

Financing Market, THE MERGER YEARBOOK (1990). The failure of two well-publicized leveraged buyouts

involving Federated Department Stores and United Airlines occurred around this time.

 

217 The recession, often associated with the Kuwait/Iraq Persian Gulf War, is dated from July 1990 to March 1991

(Economic Report of the President, February 1999, pp. 21, 258). Depending upon any lag in mergers, this recession may

have occurred too late to be a plausible rationale for at least the first year of the merger decline. However, Auerbach

& Slemrod, The Economic Effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE (June

1997) at p. 613, speculate that macroeconomic conditions may have been the driving force behind mergers in the late

1980s because merger activity fell so suddenly in 1990 when macroeconomic conditions deteriorated.

 

218 For example, a $15 million transaction in 1978 would correspond to a $38.3 million deal in 1999 based on the

overall change in the Consumer Price Index. It appears that about 30 to 35 percent of HSR merger filings fell in the $15

million to $38 million range in recent years. Thus, the number of mergers recorded in 2000 is overstated by about 30

to 35 percent compared to the number that would have been recorded if 1978 real dollar thresholds had been used (the

dollar value of reported mergers is also overstated but to a lesser extent because the “inappropriately” counted mergers

are all relatively small in dollar value.)

56

key threshold was raised to $50 million and indexed to inflation. Table 5 lists certain annual data on

merger activity and merger enforcement actions and the monthly merger counts collected under this

program are depicted in Figure 3. 

The monthly data in Figure 3 reveal the previously mentioned waves and obvious local spikes

in monthly transactions in November 1986 (494 transactions) and November 1989 (371 transactions.

The November 1986 peak can most readily be explained by the passage of the 1986 Tax Act that

repealed the "General Utilities" doctrine. This action returned firms to the pre-1935 regime in which

shareholders were taxed twice on certain distributions from firms. Many deals may have been

"hurried-up" to avoid the larger tax bite that would occur after 1986.215

The other obvious local merger peak in November 1989 (and the subsequent decline in

transactions for two years after the peak) is harder to explain. The decline may have been occasioned

by a change in administrations, by the demise of "junk bond" and bank financing,216 by alterations in

the tax laws that further limited the interest deductibility of mergers, by a general decline in economic

activity,217 or by the end of a cycle driven by technology or cost and demand shocks. 

As with the MergerStat data presented in Table 1, the HSR data show a marked growth in

merger activity over the period, but not all of the increase is real. Because firms were required to file

merger plans based on nominal value thresholds that were not adjusted for inflation, the merger series

had an artificial and growing upward bias over time. While this inflation bias cannot account for all

of the general upward drift in merger activity, it does account for a nontrivial part of it.218 This

characteristic is not, however, unique to the HSR merger counts - MergerStat also uses a fixed dollar
57

threshold ($1 million) for inclusion in its merger counts.

The data in Table 5 also indicate that in the early years of the HSR program (1981-82), the

antitrust agencies would receive 1000 to 1500 filings annually and firms did not tend to uniformly

request early termination of the HSR waiting period. Beginning in 1983, however, requests for early

termination rose markedly and the Agencies began to routinely grant those requests for over threefourths of reported mergers. 

As noted in Table 5 and in Figures 4 and 5, the percentage of mergers that have been subject

to intensive scrutiny (i.e., second requests for information) under the HSR reporting system has

declined over the past twenty years. In the early years, second requests were issued by the two antitrust

agencies in 9 percent of transactions; but this percentage quickly fell to the 3 to 4 percent range in the

1980s and fell further to the 2 to 3 percent range of transactions in recent years. The percentages of

deals that were subjected to second requests does not, however, tell much of the story of anti-merger

enforcement. The basic standard used for deciding which mergers to review will affect the

transactions that firms attempt, and this will, in turn, affect the deals that the Agencies must review.

The types of cases that arrived on the Agencies' doorstep differed a good bit across the years. In the

early 1980s, the agencies were just beginning to allow certain horizontal mergers involving relatively

small market shares (by today’s standards) that had been largely verboten for the prior 30 years. But

by the 1990s, more substantial horizontal and network-related mergers were forthcoming. The change

in the types of mergers seen by the antitrust agencies was likely due to many factors, including changes

in technologies, changes in regulation of industries, and a slow evolution of generalized merger review

standards.
58

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Table 1

 Number of Mergers, Divestitures and Disclosed Value (1968-2000)

Year Net merger and

acquisitions

announcements

Number of

transactions

with purchase

price disclosed

Total

Divestitures

Divestitures as %

of Total

Total dollar

value paid 

($ billions)

Constant dollar

value *

($ billions)

1968 4462 1514 557 12.5 43.60 119.1

1969 6107 2300 801 13.1 23.70 62.4

1970 5152 1671 1401 27.2 16.40 41.7

1971 4608 1707 1920 41.7 12.60 31.1

1972 4801 1930 1770 36.9 16.70 40.0

1973 4040 1574 1557 38.5 16.70 36.6

1974 2861 995 1331 46.5 12.50 23.8

1975 2297 848 1236 53.8 11.80 20.3

1976 2276 998 1204 52.9 20.00 32.9

1977 2224 1032 1002 45.1 21.90 33.8

1978 2106 1071 820 38.9 34.20 49.0

1979 2128 1047 752 35.3 43.50 56.1

1980 1889 890 666 35.3 44.30 50.3

1981 2395 1126 830 34.7 82.60 86.0

1982 2346 930 875 37.3 53.80 53.8

1983 2533 1077 932 36.8 73.10 71.9

1984 2543 1084 900 35.4 122.20 117.8

1985 3001 1320 1218 40.6 179.80 171.7

1986 3336 1468 1259 37.7 173.10 167.7

1987 2032 972 807 39.7 163.70 155.3

1988 2258 1149 894 39.6 246.90 228.6

1989 2366 1092 1055 44.6 221.10 194.6

1990 2074 856 940 45.3 108.20 90.8

1991 1877 722 849 45.2 71.20 58.5

1992 2574 950 1026 39.9 96.70 78.5

1993 2663 1081 1134 42.6 176.40 141.5

1994 2997 1348 1134 37.8 226.70 180.6

1995 3510 1735 1199 34.2 356.00 278.3

1996 5848 2658 1702 29.1 495.00 377.0

1997 7800 3013 2108 27.0 657.10 498.6

1998 7809 3091 1987 25.4 1191.90 911.9

1999 9278 3384 2353 25.4 1425.90 1072.1

2000 9566 3757 2501 26.1 1325.70 960.7

*Constant dollar value is the annual dollar value divided by the seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index, by Stage of Processing,

Total Finished Goods (1982=100), Table B-65, p. 349, Economic Report of the President, January 2001.

SOURCE: Mergerstat® Review, 2001, pp. 2 and 9. The Mergerstat® Review Research Department tracks publicly announced

formal transfers of ownership of at least 10 percent of a company’s equity where the purchase price is at least $1,000,000, and whe re

at least one of the parties is a U .S. en tity. These transactions are recorded as they are announced, not as they are completed. Open

market stock purchases are not recorded. For sellers in the database with competing bids, only the highest offer is included in the

calculation. Ca nce lled tran sac tions a re deducted from total announcements in the period in which the cancellation occurred, resulting

in net merger-acquisition announcements for that period. The statistics reflect completed or pending transactions as of the end of

the applicable period.

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59

Figure 1- Merger and Acquisition Activity ( 1968-2000 )
60

Figure 2 - Merger and Acquisition Dollar Value as a Percentage of GDP (1968-2000)
61

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Table 2

Mergerstat Review Full Year Merger Industry Analysis (1999-2000)

Number of

Transaction

Total dollar value paid*

(millions of dollars)

Average3 Premium

paid over market*

Industry Sector 1999 2000 1999 (base)12000 (base)11999 (base)22000 (base)2

Agricultural 

production

29 28 16,301.3 (10) 4,843.9 (7) 43.8 (2) 45.1 (2)

Manufacturing

4 2,444 2,443 405,041.0 (1,039) 491,294.9 (1,148) 43.2 (232) 49.2 (209)

Natural resources 96 113 40,778.1 (60) 68,057.3 (74) 36.9 (17) 34.3 (20)

Transportation 119 90 15,232.2 (51) 8,583.0 (35) 30.8 (11) 64.3 (8)

Communication & 

 broadcasting 652 652 476,584.3 (271) 128,284.9 (305) 44.0 (32) 81.5 (17)

Utilities 218 154 86,385.7 (117) 53,980.7 (96) 36.0 (39) 45.1 (17)

Wholesale & 

distribution 432 363 12,755.0 (107) 14,771.7 (109) 39.8 (22) 60.8 (16)

Retail 529 404 30,728.8 (148) 11,363.7 (126) 66.7 (21) 58.6 (13)

Financial services 1,089 1,064 140,429.7 (448) 230,141.4 (421) 33.7 (164) 43.2 (139)

Other services 3,555 4,199 200,392.2 (1,115) 308,958.5 (1,424) 53.5 (176) 52.5 (126)

Real estate 115 56 1,265.5 (18) 5,462.9 (12) 20.8 (2) 25.5 (7)

Total 9,278 9,566 1,425,884. (3,384) 1,325,734.0 (3,757) 43.3 (723) 49.2 (574)

* Based on those transactions supplying data.

1

 Num ber of transactions which disclosed a purchase price

2 Number of acquisitions of publicly-traded companies where the premium over market was paid. Premiums can only be

 calcu lated o n ac quis itions o f publicly-traded com pan ies. 

3

 W eighted av erage usin g ba se as w eight, to be c onsiste nt with “total” average prem ium paid ove r m ark et co m puted by Mergers tat

 Review . 

4

 Includes p etroleu m refining . 

SO UR CE : Merg erstat® R eview 20 01, pp. 72 and 78, an d 20 00, p. 72. 

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Table 3

Merger Activity, Selected Industries (2000)

 Number Percent

No.

Value

($billion)

Percent of total

number

Percent of

total value

Computer Software,

Supplies &

Services

2531 144.6 26.5 10.9

Leisure Equipment 276 119.0 2.9 9.0

Banking & Finance 309 118.3 3.2 8.9

Electronics 233 99.0 2.4 7.5

Communications 467 85.1 4.9 6.4

Brokerage, 

Investment & 

Management 

Consulting 522 82.1 5.5 6.2

Food Processing 113 80.7 1.2 6.1

Oil & Gas 92 67.2 1.0 5.1

Electric, Gas, Water 

& Sanitary

Services

154 54.0 1.6 4.1

Electrical

Equipment

295 53.9 3.1 4.1

Aerospace, Aircraft

& Defense

36 50.3 0.4 3.8

Broadcasting 185 43.1 1.9 3.3

Drugs, Medical 

Supplies & 

Equipment 227 31.1 2.4 2.3

Insurance 233 29.8 2.4 2.2

Paper & packaging 41 27.5 0.4 2.1

Printing &

Publishing

235 25.7 2.5 1.9

Office Equipment 102 21.6 1.1 1.6

Instruments & 

Photographic 

Equipment 157 16.9 1.6 1.3

Wholesale & 

Distribution 363 14.8 3.8 1.1

Total, selected 

industries 6571 892.7 68.7 67.3

Total 9566 1325.7 100.0 100.0

SO UR CE : Merg erstat® R eview 20 01, p. 72. 

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63

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Table 4

Aggregate Concentration Trends: Percentage Share of Manufacturing Assets

by the Top 100 and 200 Manufacturing Firms for Manufacturing Corporations

(1974-1998)

 Asset Size Group

Top 100 Top 200

1974 44.4 56.7

1975 45.0 57.5

1976 45.5 58.0

1977 45.9 58.5

1978 45.5 58.3

1979 46.1 59.0

1980 46.8 59.9

1981 46.8 60.0

1982 47.7 60.9

1984 48.9 60.7

1985 49.1 61.0

1986 49.4 61.1

1987 50.0 61.8

1988 49.0 61.1

1989 49.4 61.6

1990 49.8 61.8

1991 49.5 61.6

1992 49.3 61.4

1993 49.1 61.0

1994 48.0 60.1

1995 47.1 59.3

1996 47.1 59.1

1997 47.3 59.0

1998 46.6 58.6

SOUR CE: Calculated by Quarterly Financial Report, Bureau of Census, Department of

Co m m erce for Bu reau of Ec ono m ics, Fe dera l Trad e Com m ission . Figure s are for the fourth

quarter of ea ch year. Va lues for fourth qu arter 1983 will no t be c alcu lated du e to c hanges in

the Q FR adm inistrative procedu res. 

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64

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Table 4A

Aggregate Concentration Trends: Percentage Share of Manufacturing Value

Added by the Top 50, 100, 150, and 200 Manufacturing Firms (1977-1992)

1977 1982 1987 1992

Top 50 24.4 23.9 24.9 23.7

Top 100 33.4 32.8 33.4 32.2

Top 150 39.5 38.7 39.0 37.7

Top 200 43.8 43.2 43.2 41.7

SO URCE: U.S. CE NSU S O F M AN UFA CTU RES , CONCEN TR AT ION RA TIO S IN

MANU FACTU RING Subject Series MC87-5-6, at table 2 (1992). 1992 data from 

MC 92-S -2 at http://ww w.c ensus.gov/epcd/ww w/c oncentration.htm l. 

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65

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Table 5 

Hart-Scott-Rodino Summary of Transactions, Fiscal Year (Oct.-Sept.), 1979-2000

Year Transaction

s Reported

Dollar

Value

($ billions)

Adjusted

transactions

in which a

second

request

could have

been issued1

Investigations

in which

second

requests were

issued

FTC2

second

requests

FTC

percent3

DOJ2

second

requests

DOJ

percent3

Number of

transactions

involving a

request for

early

termination5

Granted5 Denied5

1979 861 NA NA NA 63 NA 50 NA 123 60 62

1980 784 NA NA NA 31 NA 37 NA 100 75 22

1981 996 NA 762 69 34 4.5 35 4.6 164 135 26

1982 1203 74.0 713 65 39 5.5 26 3.6 222 142 63

1983 1093 80.6 903 34 12 1.3 22 2.4 606 495 103

1984 1340 153.6 1119 61 25 2.2 36 3.2 963 781 153

1985 1603 188.6 1301 67 24 1.8 43 3.3 1281 975 288

1986 1949 NA 1660 71 32 1.9 39 2.3 1639 1263 362

1987 2533 577.9 2170 58 18 0.8 40 1.8 2264 1752 512

1988 2746 350.7 2391 68 39 1.6 29 1.2 2440 1885 555

1989 2883 503.5 2535 64 35 1.4 29 1.1 2582 1937 645

1990 2262 302.6 1955 89 55 2.8 34 1.7 1975 1299 676

1991 1529 168.7 1376 64 33 2.4 31 2.3 1321 907 414

1992 1589 165.4 1451 44 26 1.8 18 1.2 1403 1020 383

1993 1846 222.3 1745 71 40 2.3 31 1.8 1689 1201 448

1994 2305 372.0 2128 73 46 2.2 27 1.3 2081 1508 573

1995 2816 508.9 2612 101 58 2.2 43 1.6 2471 1869 602

1996 3087 677.4 2864 99 36 1.3 63 2.2 2861 2044 817

1997 3702 776.6 3438 122 45 1.3 77 2.2 3363 2513 850

1998 4728 1436.1 4575 125 46 1.0 79 1.7 4323 3234 1089

1999 4642 1852.8 4340 111 45 1.0 68 1.6 4110 3103 1007

2000 4926 2990.7 4749 98 43 0.9 55 1.2 4324 3515 809

1 These figures omit from the total number of transactions reported all transactions for which the agencies were not authorized to request additional information. 

These include (1) incomplete transactions (only one party filed a complaint notification); (2) transactions reported pursuant to the exemption provisions of sections

7A(c)(6) and 7A(c)(8) of the Act; and (3) transactions which were found to be non-reportable. In addition, where a party filed more than one notification in the

same year to acquire voting securities of the same corporation, e.g., filing for the 15% threshold and later filing for the 25% threshold, only a single consolidated

transaction has been counted because, as a practical matter, the agencies do not issue more than one second request in such a case. These statistics also omit from

the total number of transactions reported secondary acquisitions filed pursuant to Section 801.4 of the premerger notification rules. Secondary acquisitions have

been deducted in order to be consistent with the statistics presented in most of the prior annual reports. 

2. These statistics are based on the date the request was issued and not the date the investigation was opened. Second requests may not have been counted in

precisely the same manner over time and across agencies, so the time series may not be fully consistent on those dimensions. 

3. Second request investigations as a percentage of the total number of adjusted transactions.

4. These statistics are based on the date of the H-S-R filing and not the date action was taken on the request.

SOURCE: The data were compiled by the FTC’s premerger notification office. Most of these data can be found in FTC HSR Annual Report to Congress for

Fiscal Year 2000 and 1992 at http://www.ftc.gov/bc/hsr/hsrinfopub.htm.

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66

 Figure 3 - Number of Mergers Reported to Government by Month (1978-2000)
67

 Figure 4 - Number of FTC and DOJ Second Request Investigations under Hart-Scott-Rodino (FY 1979-2000)
68

Figure 5 - Percentage of Mergers that Receive a Second Request for Information (FY 1981-2000)
69

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