Do Auctions and Forced Divestitures increase Competition?

Where markets are insufficiently competitive, governments can intervene by auctioninglicenses to operate or by forcing divestitures. The Dutch government has doneexactly that, organizing auctions to redistribute tenancy rights for highway gasolinestations and forcing the divestiture of outlets of four majors. We evaluate this policyexperiment using panel data containing detailed price information. We find that anobligation to divest lowers prices by over 2% while the auctioning of licenses withoutsuch an obligation has no discernible effect. We find weak evidence for price effects onnearby com... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Soetevent, Adriaan R.
Haan, Marco A.
Heijnen, Pim
Dokumenttyp: doc-type:workingPaper
Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
Verlag/Hrsg.: Amsterdam and Rotterdam: Tinbergen Institute
Schlagwörter: ddc:330 / D43 / D44 / L11 / Divestitures / Auctions / Entry / Policy Evaluation / Auktion / Lizenz / Tankstelle / Autobahn / Markteintritt / Unvollkommener Wettbewerb / Wirkungsanalyse / Niederlande
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26860735
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/10419/86905

Where markets are insufficiently competitive, governments can intervene by auctioninglicenses to operate or by forcing divestitures. The Dutch government has doneexactly that, organizing auctions to redistribute tenancy rights for highway gasolinestations and forcing the divestiture of outlets of four majors. We evaluate this policyexperiment using panel data containing detailed price information. We find that anobligation to divest lowers prices by over 2% while the auctioning of licenses withoutsuch an obligation has no discernible effect. We find weak evidence for price effects onnearby competitors.