Market shares, R&D agreements, and the EU block exemption

Regulation (EC) No 1217/2010 on the application of Article 101(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to categories of R&D agreements exempts horizontal R&D agreements from antitrust concerns when the combined market share of participants is low enough. We examine the theoretical basis for this criterion by extending existing models so that a subset of firms innovates and participates in an R&D cooperation agreement. We show that the incentive to increase innovation depends on a complex set of effects. We identify one, the outsider effect, that can lead firms to increase R&D under cooperation precisely when their combined market share is high. In a general model in which all firms innovate, we also find that R&D agreements can be more beneficial at higher market shares. We argue that existing theory therefore does not support limiting the exemption to low market shares. (c) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.