Self-Harming Mergers

In this book we study different solution concepts in three-player games and their effects on social welfare. Furthermore, the outcome under cooperative behavior is compared with the outcome under non-cooperative behavior. A ``merger'' is an agreement between two or more firms of coordinating strategical actions together and sharing the received profits. By analyzing three-player situations in price and quantity competition as well as in more general strategic games, we demonstrate the occurrence of mergers with negative effects. Moreover, a maximal subset of self-harming mergers in sequential and simultaneous versions of general three-player strategic games is constructed under the restrictions that the equilibria with and without merger are unique and the potential merging players have a dominant strategy.

Autorentext

In 2016, the author successfully finished his Bachelor of Science in mathematics at TU Munich. Since February 2016, he has been studying the Master of Finance and Actuarial Science. This book is the publication of his master thesis.