DESIGNING ANTITRUST REMEDIES FOR AIRLINE MERGERS

摘要

The paper aims at identifying and discussing the key options for remedying mergers in airline markets. In order to reach this aim, first, the past antitrust practice in the United States as well as the European Union is reviewed. Although the typical (and usually sufficient) merger remedy in the past were landing slot sacrifices, more recent merger cases such as the Ryanair/Aer Lingus merger show that even complex menus of merger remedies are sometimes not sufficient to heal the competition concerns. Based on this empirical finding, second, the identification and discussion of the various remedy options is undertaken from a theoretical perspective, followed by the derivation of important general rules under what circumstances airline mergers run into antitrust problems and under what circumstances a certain remedy might heal competition concerns and therefore helps to get the merger though. The fourth section concludes the paper by giving a wrap-up as well as identifying future research potentials.