Modernization of the Concentration Reporting
Modernization of the Concentration Reporting
On grounds of the statutory mandate in §44(1)(a) GWB (German Act Against Restraints of Competition), the Monopoly Commission publishes a biennial report in which it states the state and foreseeable development of corporate concentration in the Federal Republic of Germany.In the determination of economically relevant corporate concentration several challenges arise. Corporate linkages are to be included in so far as that linked corporations act like a single economic unit.Further challenges involve the demarcation of markets. With regard to the product market, this is in particular the treatment of the differences between the statistical classification of economic activities and relevant markets as well as the attribution of multi-product firms. With regard to the geographic market, only the federal territory as a whole has been considered so far, deviant from this, many markets have an either international or regional extent. Furthermore, production and sales areas can differ. As the openness and complexity of the German economy have increased in recent decades both in matters of trade in goods and corporate linkages, the aforementioned challenges of the concentration reporting have aggravated as well. Moreover, the officially and privately available database supply, electronic data processing technology and the economic science have advanced.In the light of the altered framework, modernization proposals to improve the concentration reporting are being developed in the course of this project.