Conference on Mergers, Innovation and the Labour Market

Date: 15 – 16 Sep 2022

Location: London

Format: Hybrid

Local Organizers: Carmine Ornaghi (University of Southampton); Franco Mariuzzo (UEA and CCP); Lorenzo Cassi (Paris School of Economics); Peter Ormosi (UEA and CCP); Sean Ennis (UEA and CCP)

Participants: Prof. Ioanna Marinescu, Prof. Justus Haucap and Prof. Bruce Lyons are among the academics that will contribute to the event.

Background and objective:

Efficiencies play a crucial role in assessing the desirability of mergers for consumers and for the economy as a whole. Merging firms routinely invoke production efficiencies and knowledge synergies in R&D as compelling reasons for consolidation. However, the ex-ante evaluation of future efficiencies spurred by a merger as well as the retrospective analysis of the effects of mergers on static and dynamic efficiencies can be daunting tasks, because of the difficulty in accessing detailed information on production activities within firms and the uncertainty associated with innovation projects, among other reasons. Furthermore, even if mergers can be shown to generate efficiency gains that can be passed onto customers in the form of lower prices or improved product quality, there is a growing discussion among economists and policy makers about the need of broadening the aim of merger enforcement to limit practices that harm free and fair competition not only in the product markets, to the detriment of consumers, but also in the labour markets, to the detriment of workers. Accordingly, mergers that should be approved under a consumer welfare standard, may be challenged if assessed through the lenses of a worker welfare standard. Given the empirical challenges in assessing efficiencies and the theoretical conundrum of who should benefit from such efficiencies, the objective of this conference is to create a forum to present and discuss applied works that have tried to model and evaluate the effect of mergers on the labour market and on innovation. In particular, we welcome the submission of manuscripts on the effects of mergers on:

• Labour Market, in particular wages and employment
• Labour Productivity.
• Innovation Activities, in particular knowledge synergies in R&D projects and productivity of R&D personnel.

Submission of papers by PhD students and junior scholars is particularly welcome. Depending on the number of papers received, there may be a special session where young researcher can present and discuss their work with more experienced researchers in the field of industrial organization and labour market.

Programme:

Day 1 - Thursday 15 September 2022

12h00 - 12h50 Welcome Lunch

12h50 - 13h00 Opening Remarks by Carmine Ornaghi

Common Ownership - Chair: Carmine Ornaghi

13h00 - 14h00 Keynote Lecture - Innovation: The Bright Side of Common Ownership?

Presenter: Martin C. Schmalz, University of Oxford - Saïd Business School

Discussant: Kai-Uwe Kuhn, CCP

14h00 - 14h30 Cooperative Ownership and Strategic Investment Portfolios

Presenter: Saish Nevrekar, University of Zurich

Discussant: Philipp Brunner, University of Bern

Break (15 min)

Innovation - Chair: Tomasso Duso

14h45 - 15h15 Relative Performance and Innovation: Implication for Mergers*

Presenter: Minyan Zhu, University of Reading

Discussant: Anna Rita Bennato

15h15 - 15h45 Innovation Competition and Innovation Effects in Horizontal Mergers: US and European Selected Case Studies*

Presenter: Marcos Puccioni de Oliveira Lyra, Fluminense Federal University

Discussant: Adrian Dierx, DG Comp

15h45 - 16h15 Trading Off Stakeholder Interests: Evidence from Antitrust Investigations

Presenter: Jiaying Li, Bayes Business School

Discussant: Hendrik Meder, DG Comp

Break (15 min)

Labour Market - Chair: Franco Mariuzzo

16h30 - 17h00 Monopsony Power of Employers in the Developing Countries: The Arab Case*

Presenter: Nora Memeti, Kuwait International Law School

Discussant: Matias Ortiz de Zarate, University of Southampton

17h00 - 17h30 Mergers, Foreign Entry, and Jobs: Evidence from the U.S. Appliance Industry*

Presenter: Felix Montag, Dartmouth College

Discussant: Katharine Rockett, University of Essex

17h30 - 18h00 Corporate Social Responsibility and Employment after Acquisitions

Presenter: Jiajun Tao, Bayes Business School

Discussant: Tom Farmer, CMA

Day 2 - Friday 16 September 2022

09h00 - 09h20 Welcome Coffee

09h20 - 09h30 Opening Remarks by Carmine Ornaghi

Innovation Applied - Chair: Franco Mariuzzo

09h30 - 10h00 Acquiring innovation: who, when, and what? Evidence from antidiabetic drug development*

Presenter: Jo Seldeslachts, KU Leuven & DIW Berlin

Discussant: Farasat Bokhari, CCP

10h00 - 10h30 Antitrust Policy and Innovation

Presenter: Giovanni Morzenti, Bocconi University

Discussant: Carmine Ornaghi, University of Southampton

Break (15 min)

Innovation Applied - Chair: Farasat Bokhari

10h45 - 11h15 Learning by buying: The impact of mergers on green innovation

Presenter: Melissa Newham, ETH Zurich

Discussant: Tomaso Duso, DIW

11h15 - 11h45 Digital Platform Mergers and Innovation: Evidence From Cloud

Presenter: Franco Mariuzzo, University of East Anglia School of Economics & CCP

Discussant: Riccardo Ferrari, CMA

11h45 - 12h15 Research Joint Ventures: The Role of Financial Constraints

Presenter: Philipp Brunner, University of Bern

Discussant: Andrea Calef, UEA

Lunch (45 min)

Efficiencies & Human Capital - Chair: Riccardo Ferrrari

13h00 - 13h30 Assessing EU Merger Control through Compensating Efficiencies

Presenter: Tomaso Duso, TU Berlin & DIW Berlin

Discussant: Hendrik Meder, DG Comp

13h30 - 14h00 Scientists’ Career in the Time of Acquisitions: Evidence from the Pharmaceutical Industry

Presenter: Carmine Ornaghi, University of Southampton

Discussant: Franco Mariuzzo, CCP

Break (15 min)

14h15 - 15h45 Round Table - Chaired by Bruce Lyons, UEA & CCP

Participants:

Elena Prager*, University of Rochester - Simon Business School

Justus Haucap, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics

Adrian Dierx, Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission

Mike Walker, Competition and Markets Authority

15h45 - 16h00 Closing Remarks by Carmine Ornaghi

* Online presentation/participation.