Footloose foreign firm and profitable domestic merger

We provide a new explanation for a profitable horizontal merger between Cournot oligopolists with symmetric constant returns to scale technologies and homogeneous goods. We show that a merger can be profitable if it prevents a foreign firm from undertaking FDI. Our result is due to the effect of a merger on the foreign firm's strategic investment decision, which is different from the well-known factors, such as the synergic benefit, product differentiation and vertical pricing, which are extensively discussed in the literature. A profitable domestic merger in our analysis reduces domestic welfare. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.