For Microsoft, CRA economists advised on the $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in Europe and the US. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cleared the transaction and the EC cleared the deal subject to conditions to address potential concerns in “professional social networking” (PSN). Our analysis considered the parties’ ability and incentive to foreclose third-party suppliers of CRM solutions by restricting the availability of LinkedIn’s (sales intelligence) products, or tying/bundling them with Microsoft’s productivity assets.
Merger simulation in second-score auctions: A nested logit model
In a recent Economics Letters article, CRA’s Martino De Stefano and Serge Moresi show how to improve the second-score auction model that is often used to...