Horizontal concentration and vertical relationships / Concentration horizontale et relations verticales

This paper studies horizontal mergers in vertically related markets. In a two-level Cournot model, with an intermediate and a final market, we show that downstream mergers inducing size effects are, ceteris paribus, more profitable than upstream ones. Moreover, a merger at one level reduces the incentives to merge at the other level. Endogenizing the firms' decisions to merge by considering a merger game supports the previous results.