Vertical integration and competition policy

The European Commission has decided to implement a simplified procedure in the context of vertical integration. If the combined market shares of the merging firms is higher than 25% the Commission will investigate the merger thoroughly. Otherwise, the merger is considered harmless. The purpose of this study is to examine the welfare aspects of vertical integration in a simple model and investigate the accuracy of the proposed rule of thumb. Mergers turn out to be harmless from a social point of view when the upstream market is relatively less concentrated compared to the downstream market.