Archives For antitrust

The Washington Post editorial board understands online competition better than the European Commission does

Geoffrey Manne —  10 July 2017

Last week the editorial board of the Washington Post penned an excellent editorial responding to the European Commission’s announcement of its decision in its Google Shopping investigation. Here’s the key language from the editorial:

Whether the demise of any of [the complaining comparison shopping sites] is specifically traceable to Google, however, is not so clear. Also unclear is the aggregate harm from Google’s practices to consumers, as opposed to the unlucky companies. Birkenstock-seekers may well prefer to see a Google-generated list of vendors first, instead of clicking around to other sites…. Those who aren’t happy anyway have other options. Indeed, the rise of comparison shopping on giants such as Amazon and eBay makes concerns that Google might exercise untrammeled power over e-commerce seem, well, a bit dated…. Who knows? In a few years we might be talking about how Facebook leveraged its 2 billion users to disrupt the whole space.

That’s actually a pretty thorough, if succinct, summary of the basic problems with the Commission’s case (based on its PR and Factsheet, at least; it hasn’t released the full decision yet).

I’ll have more to say on the decision in due course, but for now I want to elaborate on two of the points raised by the WaPo editorial board, both in service of its crucial rejoinder to the Commission that “Also unclear is the aggregate harm from Google’s practices to consumers, as opposed to the unlucky companies.”

First, the WaPo editorial board points out that:

Birkenstock-seekers may well prefer to see a Google-generated list of vendors first, instead of clicking around to other sites.

It is undoubtedly true that users “may well prefer to see a Google-generated list of vendors first.” It’s also crucial to understanding the changes in Google’s search results page that have given rise to the current raft of complaints.

As I noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed two years ago:

It’s a mistake to consider “general search” and “comparison shopping” or “product search” to be distinct markets.

From the moment it was technologically feasible to do so, Google has been adapting its traditional search results—that familiar but long since vanished page of 10 blue links—to offer more specialized answers to users’ queries. Product search, which is what is at issue in the EU complaint, is the next iteration in this trend.

Internet users today seek information from myriad sources: Informational sites (Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database); review sites (Yelp and TripAdvisor); retail sites (Amazon and eBay); and social-media sites (Facebook and Twitter). What do these sites have in common? They prioritize certain types of data over others to improve the relevance of the information they provide.

“Prioritization” of Google’s own shopping results, however, is the core problem for the Commission:

Google has systematically given prominent placement to its own comparison shopping service: when a consumer enters a query into the Google search engine in relation to which Google’s comparison shopping service wants to show results, these are displayed at or near the top of the search results. (Emphasis in original).

But this sort of prioritization is the norm for all search, social media, e-commerce and similar platforms. And this shouldn’t be a surprise: The value of these platforms to the user is dependent upon their ability to sort the wheat from the chaff of the now immense amount of information coursing about the Web.

As my colleagues and I noted in a paper responding to a methodologically questionable report by Tim Wu and Yelp leveling analogous “search bias” charges in the context of local search results:

Google is a vertically integrated company that offers general search, but also a host of other products…. With its well-developed algorithm and wide range of products, it is hardly surprising that Google can provide not only direct answers to factual questions, but also a wide range of its own products and services that meet users’ needs. If consumers choose Google not randomly, but precisely because they seek to take advantage of the direct answers and other options that Google can provide, then removing the sort of “bias” alleged by [complainants] would affirmatively hurt, not help, these users. (Emphasis added).

And as Josh Wright noted in an earlier paper responding to yet another set of such “search bias” charges (in that case leveled in a similarly methodologically questionable report by Benjamin Edelman and Benjamin Lockwood):

[I]t is critical to recognize that bias alone is not evidence of competitive harm and it must be evaluated in the appropriate antitrust economic context of competition and consumers, rather individual competitors and websites. Edelman & Lockwood´s analysis provides a useful starting point for describing how search engines differ in their referrals to their own content. However, it is not useful from an antitrust policy perspective because it erroneously—and contrary to economic theory and evidence—presumes natural and procompetitive product differentiation in search rankings to be inherently harmful. (Emphasis added).

We’ll have to see what kind of analysis the Commission relies upon in its decision to reach its conclusion that prioritization is an antitrust problem, but there is reason to be skeptical that it will turn out to be compelling. The Commission states in its PR that:

The evidence shows that consumers click far more often on results that are more visible, i.e. the results appearing higher up in Google’s search results. Even on a desktop, the ten highest-ranking generic search results on page 1 together generally receive approximately 95% of all clicks on generic search results (with the top result receiving about 35% of all the clicks). The first result on page 2 of Google’s generic search results receives only about 1% of all clicks. This cannot just be explained by the fact that the first result is more relevant, because evidence also shows that moving the first result to the third rank leads to a reduction in the number of clicks by about 50%. The effects on mobile devices are even more pronounced given the much smaller screen size.

This means that by giving prominent placement only to its own comparison shopping service and by demoting competitors, Google has given its own comparison shopping service a significant advantage compared to rivals. (Emphasis added).

Whatever truth there is in the characterization that placement is more important than relevance in influencing user behavior, the evidence cited by the Commission to demonstrate that doesn’t seem applicable to what’s happening on Google’s search results page now.

Most crucially, the evidence offered by the Commission refers only to how placement affects clicks on “generic search results” and glosses over the fact that the “prominent placement” of Google’s “results” is not only a difference in position but also in the type of result offered.

Google Shopping results (like many of its other “vertical results” and direct answers) are very different than the 10 blue links of old. These “universal search” results are, for one thing, actual answers rather than merely links to other sites. They are also more visually rich and attractively and clearly displayed.

Ironically, Tim Wu and Yelp use the claim that users click less often on Google’s universal search results to support their contention that increased relevance doesn’t explain Google’s prioritization of its own content. Yet, as we note in our response to their study:

[I]f a consumer is using a search engine in order to find a direct answer to a query rather than a link to another site to answer it, click-through would actually represent a decrease in consumer welfare, not an increase.

In fact, the study fails to incorporate this dynamic even though it is precisely what the authors claim the study is measuring.

Further, as the WaPo editorial intimates, these universal search results (including Google Shopping results) are quite plausibly more valuable to users. As even Tim Wu and Yelp note:

No one truly disagrees that universal search, in concept, can be an important innovation that can serve consumers.

Google sees it exactly this way, of course. Here’s Tim Wu and Yelp again:

According to Google, a principal difference between the earlier cases and its current conduct is that universal search represents a pro-competitive, user-serving innovation. By deploying universal search, Google argues, it has made search better. As Eric Schmidt argues, “if we know the answer it is better for us to answer that question so [the user] doesn’t have to click anywhere, and in that sense we… use data sources that are our own because we can’t engineer it any other way.”

Of course, in this case, one would expect fewer clicks to correlate with higher value to users — precisely the opposite of the claim made by Tim Wu and Yelp, which is the surest sign that their study is faulty.

But the Commission, at least according to the evidence cited in its PR, doesn’t even seem to measure the relative value of the very different presentations of information at all, instead resting on assertions rooted in the irrelevant difference in user propensity to click on generic (10 blue links) search results depending on placement.

Add to this Pinar Akman’s important point that Google Shopping “results” aren’t necessarily search results at all, but paid advertising:

[O]nce one appreciates the fact that Google’s shopping results are simply ads for products and Google treats all ads with the same ad-relevant algorithm and all organic results with the same organic-relevant algorithm, the Commission’s order becomes impossible to comprehend. Is the Commission imposing on Google a duty to treat non-sponsored results in the same way that it treats sponsored results? If so, does this not provide an unfair advantage to comparison shopping sites over, for example, Google’s advertising partners as well as over Amazon, eBay, various retailers, etc…?

Randy Picker also picks up on this point:

But those Google shopping boxes are ads, Picker told me. “I can’t imagine what they’re thinking,” he said. “Google is in the advertising business. That’s how it makes its money. It has no obligation to put other people’s ads on its website.”

The bottom line here is that the WaPo editorial board does a better job characterizing the actual, relevant market dynamics in a single sentence than the Commission seems to have done in its lengthy releases summarizing its decision following seven full years of investigation.

The second point made by the WaPo editorial board to which I want to draw attention is equally important:

Those who aren’t happy anyway have other options. Indeed, the rise of comparison shopping on giants such as Amazon and eBay makes concerns that Google might exercise untrammeled power over e-commerce seem, well, a bit dated…. Who knows? In a few years we might be talking about how Facebook leveraged its 2 billion users to disrupt the whole space.

The Commission dismisses this argument in its Factsheet:

The Commission Decision concerns the effect of Google’s practices on comparison shopping markets. These offer a different service to merchant platforms, such as Amazon and eBay. Comparison shopping services offer a tool for consumers to compare products and prices online and find deals from online retailers of all types. By contrast, they do not offer the possibility for products to be bought on their site, which is precisely the aim of merchant platforms. Google’s own commercial behaviour reflects these differences – merchant platforms are eligible to appear in Google Shopping whereas rival comparison shopping services are not.

But the reality is that “comparison shopping,” just like “general search,” is just one technology among many for serving information and ads to consumers online. Defining the relevant market or limiting the definition of competition in terms of the particular mechanism that Google (or Foundem, or Amazon, or Facebook…) happens to use doesn’t reflect the extent of substitutability between these different mechanisms.

Properly defined, the market in which Google competes online is not search, but something more like online “matchmaking” between advertisers, retailers and consumers. And this market is enormously competitive. The same goes for comparison shopping.

And the fact that Amazon and eBay “offer the possibility for products to be bought on their site” doesn’t take away from the fact that they also “offer a tool for consumers to compare products and prices online and find deals from online retailers of all types.” Not only do these sites contain enormous amounts of valuable (and well-presented) information about products, including product comparisons and consumer reviews, but they also actually offer comparisons among retailers. In fact, Fifty percent of the items sold through Amazon’s platform, for example, are sold by third-party retailers — the same sort of retailers that might also show up on a comparison shopping site.

More importantly, though, as the WaPo editorial rightly notes, “[t]hose who aren’t happy anyway have other options.” Google just isn’t the indispensable gateway to the Internet (and definitely not to shopping on the Internet) that the Commission seems to think.

Today over half of product searches in the US start on Amazon. The majority of web page referrals come from Facebook. Yelp’s most engaged users now access it via its app (which has seen more than 3x growth in the past five years). And a staggering 40 percent of mobile browsing on both Android and iOS now takes place inside the Facebook app.

Then there are “closed” platforms like the iTunes store and innumerable other apps that handle copious search traffic (including shopping-related traffic) but also don’t figure in the Commission’s analysis, apparently.

In fact, billions of users reach millions of companies every day through direct browser navigation, social media, apps, email links, review sites, blogs, and countless other means — all without once touching Google.com. So-called “dark social” interactions (email, text messages, and IMs) drive huge amounts of some of the most valuable traffic on the Internet, in fact.

All of this, in turn, has led to a competitive scramble to roll out completely new technologies to meet consumers’ informational (and merchants’ advertising) needs. The already-arriving swarm of VR, chatbots, digital assistants, smart-home devices, and more will offer even more interfaces besides Google through which consumers can reach their favorite online destinations.

The point is this: Google’s competitors complaining that the world is evolving around them don’t need to rely on Google. That they may choose to do so does not saddle Google with an obligation to ensure that they can always do so.

Antitrust laws — in Europe, no less than in the US — don’t require Google or any other firm to make life easier for competitors. That’s especially true when doing so would come at the cost of consumer-welfare-enhancing innovations. The Commission doesn’t seem to have grasped this fundamental point, however.

The WaPo editorial board gets it, though:

The immense size and power of all Internet giants are a legitimate focus for the antitrust authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. Brussels vs. Google, however, seems to be a case of punishment without crime.

In advertising, antitrust, essential facilities, exclusionary conduct, google, internet, Internet search, law and economics, market definition, markets, monopolization, technology, vertical restraints , , , , , , , , , , ,
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A few thoughts on the European Commission decision against Google

Nicolas Petit —  29 June 2017

Regardless of the merits and soundness (or lack thereof) of this week’s European Commission Decision in the Google Shopping case — one cannot assess this until we have the text of the decision — two comments really struck me during the press conference.

First, it was said that Google’s conduct had essentially reduced innovation. If I heard correctly, this is a formidable statement. In 2016, another official EU service published stats that described Alphabet as increasing its R&D by 22% and ranked it as the world’s 4th top R&D investor. Sure it can always be better. And sure this does not excuse everything. But still. The press conference language on incentives to innovate was a bit of an oversell, to say the least.

Second, the Commission views this decision as a “precedent” or as a “framework” that will inform the way dominant Internet platforms should display, intermediate and market their services and those of their competitors. This may fuel additional complaints by other vertical search rivals against (i) Google in relation to other product lines, but also against (ii) other large platform players.

Beyond this, the Commission’s approach raises a gazillion questions of law and economics. Pending the disclosure of the economic evidence in the published decision, let me share some thoughts on a few (arbitrarily) selected legal issues.

First, the Commission has drawn the lesson of the Microsoft remedy quagmire. The Commission refrains from using a trustee to ensure compliance with the decision. This had been a bone of contention in the 2007 Microsoft appeal. Readers will recall that the Commission had imposed on Microsoft to appoint a monitoring trustee, who was supposed to advise on possible infringements in the implementation of the decision. On appeal, the Court eventually held that the Commission was solely responsible for this, and could not delegate those powers. Sure, the Commission could “retai[n] its own external expert to provide advice when it investigates the implementation of the remedies.” But no more than that.

Second, we learn that the Commission is no longer in the business of software design. Recall the failed untying of WMP and Windows — Windows Naked sold only 11,787 copies, likely bought by tech bootleggers willing to acquire the first piece of software ever designed by antitrust officials — or the browser “Choice Screen” compliance saga which eventually culminated with a €561 million fine. Nothing of this can be found here. The Commission leaves remedial design to the abstract concept of “equal treatment”.[1] This, certainly, is a (relatively) commendable approach, and one that could inspire remedies in other unilateral conduct cases, in particular, exploitative conduct ones where pricing remedies are both costly, impractical, and consequentially inefficient.

On the other hand, readers will also not fail to see the corollary implication of “equal treatment”: search neutrality could actually cut both ways, and lead to a lawful degradation in consumer welfare if Google were ever to decide to abandon rich format displays for both its own shopping services and those of rivals.

Third, neither big data nor algorithmic design is directly vilified in the case (“The Commission Decision does not object to the design of Google’s generic search algorithms or to demotions as such, nor to the way that Google displays or organises its search results pages”). In fact, the Commission objects to the selective application of Google’s generic search algorithms to its own products. This is an interesting, and subtle, clarification given all the coverage that this topic has attracted in recent antitrust literature. We are in fact very close to a run of the mill claim of disguised market manipulation, not causally related to data or algorithmic technology.

Fourth, Google said it contemplated a possible appeal of the decision. Now, here’s a challenging question: can an antitrust defendant effectively exercise its right to judicial review of an administrative agency (and more generally its rights of defense), when it operates under the threat of antitrust sanctions in ongoing parallel cases investigated by the same agency (i.e., the antitrust inquiries related to Android and Ads)? This question cuts further than the Google Shopping case. Say firm A contemplates a merger with firm B in market X, while it is at the same time subject to antitrust investigations in market Z. And assume that X and Z are neither substitutes nor complements so there is little competitive relationship between both products. Can the Commission leverage ongoing antitrust investigations in market Z to extract merger concessions in market X? Perhaps more to the point, can the firm interact with the Commission as if the investigations are completely distinct, or does it have to play a more nuanced game and consider the ramifications of its interactions with the Commission in both markets?

Fifth, as to the odds of a possible appeal, I don’t believe that arguments on the economic evidence or legal theory of liability will ever be successful before the General Court of the EU. The law and doctrine in unilateral conduct cases are disturbingly — and almost irrationally — severe. As I have noted elsewhere, the bottom line in the EU case-law on unilateral conduct is to consider the genuine requirement of “harm to competition” as a rhetorical question, not an empirical one. In EU unilateral conduct law, exclusion of every and any firm is a per se concern, regardless of evidence of efficiency, entry or rivalry.

In turn, I tend to opine that Google has a stronger game from a procedural standpoint, having been left with (i) the expectation of a settlement (it played ball three times by making proposals); (ii) a corollary expectation of the absence of a fine (settlement discussions are not appropriate for cases that could end with fines); and (iii) a full seven long years of an investigatory cloud. We know from the past that EU judges like procedural issues, but like comparably less to debate the substance of the law in unilateral conduct cases. This case could thus be a test case in terms of setting boundaries on how freely the Commission can U-turn a case (the Commissioner said “take the case forward in a different way”).

In anticompetitive market distortions, antitrust, exclusionary conduct, google, Internet search, law and economics, litigation, markets, monopolization, technology, vertical restraints , , , ,
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Ag-biotech merger symposium wrap-up [Ag-Biotech Symposium]

Geoffrey Manne —  5 April 2017

On Thursday, March 30, Friday March 31, and Monday April 3, Truth on the Market and the International Center for Law and Economics presented a blog symposium — Agricultural and Biotech Mergers: Implications for Antitrust Law and Economics in Innovative Industries — discussing three proposed agricultural/biotech industry mergers awaiting judgment by antitrust authorities around the globe. These proposed mergers — Bayer/Monsanto, Dow/DuPont and ChemChina/Syngenta — present a host of fascinating issues, many of which go to the core of merger enforcement in innovative industries — and antitrust law and economics more broadly.

The big issue for the symposium participants was innovation (as it was for the European Commission, which cleared the Dow/DuPont merger last week, subject to conditions, one of which related to the firms’ R&D activities).

Critics of the mergers, as currently proposed, asserted that the increased concentration arising from the “Big 6” Ag-biotech firms consolidating into the Big 4 could reduce innovation competition by (1) eliminating parallel paths of research and development (Moss); (2) creating highly integrated technology/traits/seeds/chemicals platforms that erect barriers to new entry platforms (Moss); (3) exploiting eventual network effects that may result from the shift towards data-driven agriculture to block new entry in input markets (Lianos); or (4) increasing incentives to refuse to license, impose discriminatory restrictions in technology licensing agreements, or tacitly “agree” not to compete (Moss).

Rather than fixating on horizontal market share, proponents of the mergers argued that innovative industries are often marked by disruptions and that investment in innovation is an important signal of competition (Manne). An evaluation of the overall level of innovation should include not only the additional economies of scale and scope of the merged firms, but also advancements made by more nimble, less risk-averse biotech companies and smaller firms, whose innovations the larger firms can incentivize through licensing or M&A (Shepherd). In fact, increased efficiency created by economies of scale and scope can make funds available to source innovation outside of the large firms (Shepherd).

In addition, innovation analysis must also account for the intricately interwoven nature of agricultural technology across seeds and traits, crop protection, and, now, digital farming (Sykuta). Combined product portfolios generate more data to analyze, resulting in increased data-driven value for farmers and more efficiently targeted R&D resources (Sykuta).

While critics voiced concerns over such platforms erecting barriers to entry, markets are contestable to the extent that incumbents are incentivized to compete (Russell). It is worth noting that certain industries with high barriers to entry or exit, significant sunk costs, and significant costs disadvantages for new entrants (including automobiles, wireless service, and cable networks) have seen their prices decrease substantially relative to inflation over the last 20 years — even as concentration has increased (Russell). Not coincidentally, product innovation in these industries, as in ag-biotech, has been high.

Ultimately, assessing the likely effects of each merger using static measures of market structure is arguably unreliable or irrelevant in dynamic markets with high levels of innovation (Manne).

Regarding patents, critics were skeptical that combining the patent portfolios of the merging companies would offer benefits beyond those arising from cross-licensing, and would serve to raise rivals’ costs (Ghosh). While this may be true in some cases, IP rights are probabilistic, especially in dynamic markets, as Nicolas Petit noted:

There is no certainty that R&D investments will lead to commercially successful applications; (ii) no guarantee that IP rights will resist to invalidity proceedings in court; (iii) little safety to competition by other product applications which do not practice the IP but provide substitute functionality; and (iv) no inevitability that the environmental, toxicological and regulatory authorization rights that (often) accompany IP rights will not be cancelled when legal requirements change.

In spite of these uncertainties, deals such as the pending ag-biotech mergers provide managers the opportunity to evaluate and reorganize assets to maximize innovation and return on investment in such a way that would not be possible absent a merger (Sykuta). Neither party would fully place its IP and innovation pipeline on the table otherwise.

For a complete rundown of the arguments both for and against, the full archive of symposium posts from our outstanding and diverse group of scholars, practitioners and other experts is available at this link, and individual posts can be easily accessed by clicking on the authors’ names below.

We’d like to thank all of the participants for their excellent contributions!

In ag-biotech symposium, agriculture, agtech/biotech, antitrust, international center for law & economics, law and economics, market definition, markets, merger guidelines, mergers & acquisitions, patent, Patents, technology, truth on the market , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Innovation as a shield and a club in the agribusiness mergers [Ag-Biotech Symposium]

John Lopatka —  3 April 2017

John E. Lopatka is A. Robert Noll Distinguished Professor of Law at Penn State Law School

People need to eat. All else equal, the more food that can be produced from an acre of land, the better off they’ll be. Of course, people want to pay as little as possible for their food to boot. At heart, the antitrust analysis of the pending agribusiness mergers requires a simple assessment of their effects on food production and price. But making that assessment raises difficult questions about institutional competence.

Each of the three mergers – Dow/DuPont, ChemChina/Syngenta, and Bayer/Monsanto – involves agricultural products, such as different kinds of seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers. All of these products are inputs in the production of food – the better and cheaper are these products, the more food is produced. The array of products these firms produce invites potentially controversial market definition determinations, but these determinations are standard fare in antitrust law and economics, and conventional analysis handles them tolerably well. Each merger appears to pose overlaps in some product markets, though they seem to be relatively small parts of the firms’ businesses. Traditional merger analysis would examine these markets in properly defined geographic markets, some of which are likely international. The concern in these markets seems to be coordinated interaction, and the analysis of potential anticompetitive coordination would thus focus on concentration and entry barriers. Much could be said about the assumption that product markets perform less competitively as concentration increases, but that is an issue for others or at least another day.

More importantly for my purposes here, to the extent that any of these mergers creates concentration in a market that is competitively problematic and not likely to be cured by new entry, a fix is fairly easy. These are mergers in which asset divestiture is feasible, in which the parties seem willing to divest assets, and in which interested and qualified asset buyers are emerging. To be sure, firms may be willing to divest assets at substantial cost to appease regulators even when competitive problems are illusory, and the cost of a cure in search of an illness is a real social cost. But my concern lies elsewhere.

The parties in each of these mergers have touted innovation as a beneficial byproduct of the deal if not its raison d’être. Innovation effects have made their way into merger analysis, but not smoothly. Innovation can be a kind of efficiency, distinguished from most other efficiencies by its dynamic nature. The benefits of using a plant to its capacity are immediate: costs and prices decrease now. Any benefits of innovation will necessarily be experienced in the future, and the passage of time makes benefits both less certain and less valuable, as people prefer consumption now rather than later. The parties to these mergers in their public statements, to the extent they intend to address antitrust concerns, are implicitly asserting innovation as a defense, a kind of efficiency defense. They do not concede, of course, that their deals will be anticompetitive in any product market. But for antitrust purposes, an accelerated pace of innovation is irrelevant unless the merger appears to threaten competition.

Recognizing increased innovation as a merger defense raises all of the issues that any efficiencies defense raises, and then some. First, can efficiencies be identified?  For instance, patent portfolios can be combined, and the integration of patent rights can lower transaction costs relative to a contractual allocation of rights just as any integration can. In theory, avenues of productive research may not even be recognized until the firms’ intellectual property is combined. A merger may eliminate redundant research efforts, but identifying that which is truly duplicative is often not easy. In all, identifying efficiencies related to research and development is likely to be more difficult than identifying many other kinds of efficiencies. Second, are the efficiencies merger-specific?  The less clearly research and development efficiencies can be identified, the weaker is the claim that they cannot be achieved absent the merger. But in this respect, innovation efficiencies can be more important than most other kinds of efficiencies, because intellectual property sometimes cannot be duplicated as easily as physical property can. Third, can innovation efficiencies be quantified?  If innovation is expected to take the form of an entirely new product, such as a new pesticide, estimating its value is inherently speculative. Fourth, when will efficiencies save a merger that would otherwise be condemned?  An efficiencies defense implies a comparison between the expected harm a merger will cause and the expected benefits it will produce. Arguably those benefits have to be realized by consumers to count at all, but, in any event, a comparison between expected immediate losses of customers in an input market and expected future gains from innovation may be nearly impossible to make. The Merger Guidelines acknowledge that innovation efficiencies can be considered and note many of the concerns just listed. The takeaway is a healthy skepticism of an innovation defense. The defense should generally fail unless the model of anticompetitive harm in product (or service) markets is dubious or the efficiency claim is unusually specific and the likely benefits substantial.

Innovation can enter merger analysis in an even more troublesome way, however: as a club rather than a shield. The Merger Guidelines contemplate that a merger may have unilateral anticompetitive effects if it results in a “reduced incentive to continue with an existing product-development effort or reduced incentive to initiate development of new products.”  The stark case is one in which a merger poses no competitive problem in a product market but would allegedly reduce innovation competition. The best evidence that the elimination of innovation competition might be a reason to oppose one or more of the agribusiness mergers is the recent decision of the European Commission approving the Dow/DuPont merger, subject to various asset divestitures. The Commission, echoing the Guidelines, concluded that the merger would significantly reduce “innovation competition for pesticides” by “[r]emoving the parties’ incentives to continue to pursue ongoing parallel innovation efforts” and by “[r]emoving the parties’ incentives to develop and bring to market new pesticides.”  The agreed upon fix requires DuPont to divest most of its research and development organization.

Enforcement claims that a merger will restrict innovation competition should be met with every bit the skepticism due defense claims that innovation efficiencies save a merger. There is nothing inconsistent in this symmetry. The benefits of innovation, though potentially immense – large enough to dwarf the immediate allocative harm from a lessening of competition in product markets – is speculative. In discounted utility terms, the expected harm will usually exceed the expected benefits, given our limited ability to predict the future. But the potential gains from innovation are immense, and unless we are confident that a merger will reduce innovation, antitrust law should not intervene. We rarely are, at least we rarely should be.

As Geoffrey Manne points out, we still do not know a great deal about the optimal market structure for innovation. Evidence suggests that moderate concentration is most conducive to innovation, but it is not overwhelming, and more importantly no one is suggesting a merger policy that single-mindedly pursues a particular market structure. An examination of incentives to continue existing product development projects or to initiate projects to develop new products is superficially appealing, but its practical utility is elusive. Any firm has an incentive to develop products that increase demand. The Merger Guidelines suggest that a merger will reduce incentives to innovate if the introduction of a new product by one merging firm will capture substantial revenues from the other. The E.C. likely had this effect in mind in concluding that the merged entity would have “lower incentives . . . to innovate than Dow and DuPont separately.”  The Commission also observed that the merged firm would have “a lower ability to innovate” than the two firms separately, but just how a combination of research assets could reduce capability is utterly obscure.

In any event, whether a merger reduces incentives depends not only on the welfare of the merging parties but also on the development activities of actual and would-be competitors. A merged firm cannot afford to have its revenue captured by a new product introduced by a competitor. Of course, innovation by competitors will not spur a firm to develop new products if those competitors do not have the resources needed to innovate. One can imagine circumstances in which resources necessary to innovate in a product market are highly specialized; more realistically, the lack of specialized resources will decrease the pace of innovation. But the concept of specialized resources cannot mean resources a firm has developed that are conducive to innovate and that could be, but have not yet been, developed by other firms. It cannot simply mean a head start, unless it is very long indeed. If the first two firms in an industry build a plant, the fact that a new entrant would have to build a plant is not a sufficient reason to prevent the first two from merging. In any event, what resources are essential to innovation in an area can be difficult to determine.

Assuming essential resources can be identified, how many firms need to have them to create a competitive environment? The Guidelines place the number at “very small” plus one. Elsewhere, the federal antitrust agencies suggest that four firms other than the merged firm are sufficient to maintain innovation competition. We have models, whatever their limitations, that predict price effects in oligopolies. The Guidelines are based on them. But determining the number of firms necessary for competitive innovation is another matter. Maybe two is enough. We know for sure that innovation competition is non-existent if only one firm has the capacity to innovate, but not much else. We know that duplicative research efforts can be wasteful. If two firms would each spend $1 million to arrive at the same place, a merged firm might be able to invest $2 million and go twice as far or reach the first place at half the total cost. This is only to say that a merger can increase innovation efficiency, a possibility that is not likely to justify an otherwise anticompetitive merger but should usually protect from condemnation a merger that is not otherwise anticompetitive.

In the Dow/DuPont merger, the Commission found “specific evidence that the merged entity would have cut back on the amount they spent on developing innovative products.”  Executives of the two firms stated that they expected to reduce research and development spending by around $300 million. But a reduction in spending does not tell us whether innovation will suffer. The issue is innovation efficiency. If the two firms spent, say, $1 billion each on research, $300 million of which was duplicative of the other firm’s research, the merged firm could invest $1.7 billion without reducing productive effort. The Commission complained that the merger would reduce from five to four the number of firms that are “globally active throughout the entire R&D process.”  As noted above, maybe four firms competing are enough. We don’t know. But the Commission also discounts firms with “more limited R&D capabilities,” and the importance to successful innovation of multi-level integration in this industry is not clear.

When a merger is challenged because of an adverse effect on innovation competition, a fix can be difficult. Forced licensing might work, but that assumes that the relevant resource necessary to carry on research and development is intellectual property. More may be required. If tangible assets related to research and development are required, a divestiture might cripple the merged firm. The Commission remedy was to require the merged firm to divest “DuPont’s global R&D organization” that is related to the product operations that must be divested. The firm is permitted to retain “a few limited [R&D] assets that support the part of DuPont’s pesticide business” that is not being divested. In this case, such a divestiture may or may not hobble the merged firm, depending on whether the divested assets would have contributed to the research and development efforts that it will continue to pursue. That the merged firm was willing to accept the research and development divestiture to secure Commission approval does not mean that the divestiture will do no harm to the firm’s continuing research and development activities. Moreover, some product markets at issue in this merger are geographically limited, whereas the likely benefits of innovation are largely international. The implication is that increased concentration in product markets can be avoided by divesting assets to other large agribusinesses that do not operate in the relevant geographic market. But if the Commission insists on preserving five integrated firms active in global research and development activities, DuPont’s research and development activities cannot be divested to one of the other major players, which the Commission identifies as BASF, Bayer, and Syngenta, or firms with which any of them are attempting to merge, namely Monsanto and ChemChina. These are the five firms, of course, that are particularly likely to be interested buyers.

Innovation is important. No one disagrees. But the role of competition in stimulating innovation is not well understood. Except in unusual cases, antitrust institutions are ill-equipped either to recognize innovation efficiencies that save a merger threatening competition in product markets or to condemn mergers that threaten only innovation competition. Indeed, despite maintaining their prerogative to challenge mergers solely on the ground of a reduction in innovation competition, the federal agencies have in fact complained about an adverse effect on innovation in cases that also raise competitive issues in product markets. Innovation is at the heart of the pending agribusiness mergers. How regulators and courts analyze innovation in these cases will say something about whether they perceive their limitations.

In ag-biotech symposium, agriculture, agtech/biotech, antitrust, market definition, merger guidelines, mergers & acquisitions, technology , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Innovation-driven market structure in the ag-biotech industry [Ag-Biotech Symposium]

Geoffrey Manne —  31 March 2017

Geoffrey A. Manne is Executive Director of the International Center for Law & Economics

Dynamic versus static competition

Ever since David Teece and coauthors began writing about antitrust and innovation in high-tech industries in the 1980s, we’ve understood that traditional, price-based antitrust analysis is not intrinsically well-suited for assessing merger policy in these markets.

For high-tech industries, performance, not price, is paramount — which means that innovation is key:

Competition in some markets may take the form of Schumpeterian rivalry in which a succession of temporary monopolists displace one another through innovation. At any one time, there is little or no head-to-head price competition but there is significant ongoing innovation competition.

Innovative industries are often marked by frequent disruptions or “paradigm shifts” rather than horizontal market share contests, and investment in innovation is an important signal of competition. And competition comes from the continual threat of new entry down the road — often from competitors who, though they may start with relatively small market shares, or may arise in different markets entirely, can rapidly and unexpectedly overtake incumbents.

Which, of course, doesn’t mean that current competition and ease of entry are irrelevant. Rather, because, as Joanna Shepherd noted, innovation should be assessed across the entire industry and not solely within merging firms, conduct that might impede new, disruptive, innovative entry is indeed relevant.

But it is also important to remember that innovation comes from within incumbent firms, as well, and, often, that the overall level of innovation in an industry may be increased by the presence of large firms with economies of scope and scale.

In sum, and to paraphrase Olympia Dukakis’ character in Moonstruck: “what [we] don’t know about [the relationship between innovation and market structure] is a lot.”

What we do know, however, is that superficial, concentration-based approaches to antitrust analysis will likely overweight presumed foreclosure effects and underweight innovation effects.

We shouldn’t fetishize entry, or access, or head-to-head competition over innovation, especially where consumer welfare may be significantly improved by a reduction in the former in order to get more of the latter.

As Katz and Shelanski note:

To assess fully the impact of a merger on market performance, merger authorities and courts must examine how a proposed transaction changes market participants’ incentives and abilities to undertake investments in innovation.

At the same time, they point out that

Innovation can dramatically affect the relationship between the pre-merger marketplace and what is likely to happen if the proposed merger is consummated…. [This requires consideration of] how innovation will affect the evolution of market structure and competition. Innovation is a force that could make static measures of market structure unreliable or irrelevant, and the effects of innovation may be highly relevant to whether a merger should be challenged and to the kind of remedy antitrust authorities choose to adopt. (Emphasis added).

Dynamic competition in the ag-biotech industry

These dynamics seem to be playing out in the ag-biotech industry. (For a detailed look at how the specific characteristics of innovation in the ag-biotech industry have shaped industry structure, see, e.g., here (pdf)).  

One inconvenient truth for the “concentration reduces innovation” crowd is that, as the industry has experienced more consolidation, it has also become more, not less, productive and innovative. Between 1995 and 2015, for example, the market share of the largest seed producers and crop protection firms increased substantially. And yet, over the same period, annual industry R&D spending went up nearly 750 percent. Meanwhile, the resulting innovations have increased crop yields by 22%, reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, and increased farmer profits by 68%.

In her discussion of the importance of considering the “innovation ecosystem” in assessing the innovation effects of mergers in R&D-intensive industries, Joanna Shepherd noted that

In many consolidated firms, increases in efficiency and streamlining of operations free up money and resources to source external innovation. To improve their future revenue streams and market share, consolidated firms can be expected to use at least some of the extra resources to acquire external innovation. This increase in demand for externally-sourced innovation increases the prices paid for external assets, which, in turn, incentivizes more early-stage innovation in small firms and biotech companies. Aggregate innovation increases in the process!

The same dynamic seems to play out in the ag-biotech industry, as well:

The seed-biotechnology industry has been reliant on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as sources of new innovation. New SME startups (often spinoffs from university research) tend to specialize in commercial development of a new research tool, genetic trait, or both. Significant entry by SMEs into the seed-biotechnology sector began in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with a second wave of new entrants in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In recent years, exits have outnumbered entrants, and by 2008 just over 30 SMEs specializing in crop biotechnology were still active. The majority of the exits from the industry were the result of acquisition by larger firms. Of 27 crop biotechnology SMEs that were acquired between 1985 and 2009, 20 were acquired either directly by one of the Big 6 or by a company that itself was eventually acquired by a Big 6 company.

While there is more than one way to interpret these statistics (and they are often used by merger opponents, in fact, to lament increasing concentration), they are actually at least as consistent with an increase in innovation through collaboration (and acquisition) as with a decrease.

For what it’s worth, this is exactly how the startup community views the innovation ecosystem in the ag-biotech industry, as well. As the latest AgFunder AgTech Investing Report states:

The large agribusinesses understand that new innovation is key to their future, but the lack of M&A [by the largest agribusiness firms in 2016] highlighted their uncertainty about how to approach it. They will need to make more acquisitions to ensure entrepreneurs keep innovating and VCs keep investing.

It’s also true, as Diana Moss notes, that

Competition maximizes the potential for numerous collaborations. It also minimizes incentives to refuse to license, to impose discriminatory restrictions in technology licensing agreements, or to tacitly “agree” not to compete…. All of this points to the importance of maintaining multiple, parallel R&D pipelines, a notion that was central to the EU’s decision in Dow-DuPont.

And yet collaboration and licensing have long been prevalent in this industry. Examples are legion, but here are just a few significant ones:

  • Monsanto’s “global licensing agreement for the use of the CRISPR-Cas genome-editing technology in agriculture with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.”
  • Dow and Arcadia Biosciences’ “strategic collaboration to develop and commercialize new breakthrough yield traits and trait stacks in corn.”
  • Monsanto and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s “licensing agreement to develop crops tolerant to the broadleaf herbicide dicamba. This agreement is based on discoveries by UNL plant scientists.”

Both large and small firms in the ag-biotech industry continually enter into new agreements like these. See, e.g., here and here for a (surely incomplete) list of deals in 2016 alone.

At the same time, across the industry, new entry has been rampant despite increased M&A activity among the largest firms. Recent years have seen venture financing in AgTech skyrocket — from $400 million in 2010 to almost $5 billion in 2015 — and hundreds of startups now enter the industry annually.

The pending mergers

Today’s pending mergers are consistent with this characterization of a dynamic market in which structure is being driven by incentives to innovate, rather than monopolize. As Michael Sykuta points out,

The US agriculture sector has been experiencing consolidation at all levels for decades, even as the global ag economy has been growing and becoming more diverse. Much of this consolidation has been driven by technological changes that created economies of scale, both at the farm level and beyond.

These deals aren’t fundamentally about growing production capacity, expanding geographic reach, or otherwise enhancing market share; rather, each is a fundamental restructuring of the way the companies do business, reflecting today’s shifting agricultural markets, and the advanced technology needed to respond to them.

Technological innovation is unpredictable, often serendipitous, and frequently transformative of the ways firms organize and conduct their businesses. A company formed to grow and sell hybrid seeds in the 1920s, for example, would either have had to evolve or fold by the end of the century. Firms today will need to develop (or purchase) new capabilities and adapt to changing technology, scientific knowledge, consumer demand, and socio-political forces. The pending mergers seemingly fit exactly this mold.

As Allen Gibby notes, these mergers are essentially vertical combinations of disparate, specialized pieces of an integrated whole. Take the proposed Bayer/Monsanto merger, for example. Bayer is primarily a chemicals company, developing advanced chemicals to protect crops and enhance crop growth. Monsanto, on the other hand, primarily develops seeds and “seed traits” — advanced characteristics that ensure the heartiness of the seeds, give them resistance to herbicides and pesticides, and speed their fertilization and growth. In order to translate the individual advances of each into higher yields, it is important that these two functions work successfully together. Doing so enhances crop growth and protection far beyond what, say, spreading manure can accomplish — or either firm could accomplish working on its own.

The key is that integrated knowledge is essential to making this process function. Developing seed traits to work well with (i.e., to withstand) certain pesticides requires deep knowledge of the pesticide’s chemical characteristics, and vice-versa. Processing huge amounts of data to determine when to apply chemical treatments or to predict a disease requires not only that the right information is collected, at the right time, but also that it is analyzed in light of the unique characteristics of the seeds and chemicals. Increased communications and data-sharing between manufacturers increases the likelihood that farmers will use the best products available in the right quantity and at the right time in each field.

Vertical integration solves bargaining and long-term planning problems by unifying the interests (and the management) of these functions. Instead of arm’s length negotiation, a merged Bayer/Monsanto, for example, may better maximize R&D of complicated Ag/chem products through fully integrated departments and merged areas of expertise. A merged company can also coordinate investment decisions (instead of waiting up to 10 years to see what the other company produces), avoid duplication of research, adapt to changing conditions (and the unanticipated course of research), pool intellectual property, and bolster internal scientific capability more efficiently. All told, the merged company projects spending about $16 billion on R&D over the next six years. Such coordinated investment will likely garner far more than either company could from separately spending even the same amount to develop new products. 

Controlling an entire R&D process and pipeline of traits for resistance, chemical treatments, seeds, and digital complements would enable the merged firm to better ensure that each of these products works together to maximize crop yields, at the lowest cost, and at greater speed. Consider the advantages that Apple’s tightly-knit ecosystem of software and hardware provides to computer and device users. Such tight integration isn’t the only way to compete (think Android), but it has frequently proven to be a successful model, facilitating some functions (e.g., handoff between Macs and iPhones) that are difficult if not impossible in less-integrated systems. And, it bears noting, important elements of Apple’s innovation have come through acquisition….

Conclusion

As LaFontaine and Slade have made clear, theoretical concerns about the anticompetitive consequences of vertical integrations are belied by the virtual absence of empirical support:

Under most circumstances, profit–maximizing vertical–integration and merger decisions are efficient, not just from the firms’ but also from the consumers’ points of view.

Other antitrust scholars are skeptical of vertical-integration fears because firms normally have strong incentives to deal with providers of complementary products. Bayer and Monsanto, for example, might benefit enormously from integration, but if competing seed producers seek out Bayer’s chemicals to develop competing products, there’s little reason for the merged firm to withhold them: Even if the new seeds out-compete Monsanto’s, Bayer/Monsanto can still profit from providing the crucial input. Its incentive doesn’t necessarily change if the merger goes through, and whatever “power” Bayer has as an input is a function of its scientific know-how, not its merger with Monsanto.

In other words, while some competitors could find a less hospitable business environment, consumers will likely suffer no apparent ill effects, and continue to receive the benefits of enhanced product development and increased productivity.

That’s what we’d expect from innovation-driven integration, and antitrust enforcers should be extremely careful before thwarting or circumscribing these mergers lest they end up thwarting, rather than promoting, consumer welfare.

In ag-biotech symposium, agriculture, agtech/biotech, antitrust, Efficiencies, law and economics, markets, mergers & acquisitions, monopolization, technology, vertical restraints , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Finding your way in the seeds/agro-chem mergers labyrinth [Ag-Biotech Symposium]

Ioannis Lianos —  31 March 2017

Ioannis Lianos is Professor of Global Competition Law and Public Policy, UCL Faculty of Laws and Chief Researcher, HSE-Skolkovo Institute for Law and Development

The recently notified mergers in the seed and agro-chem industry raise difficult questions that competition authorities around the world would need to tackle in the following months. Because of the importance of their markets’ size, the decision reached by US and EU competition authorities would be particularly significant for the merging parties, but the perspective of a number of other competition authorities in emerging and developing economies, in particular the BRICS, will also play an important role if the transactions are to move forward.

The factors of production segment of the food value chain, which has been the focus of most recent merger activity, has been marked by profound transformations the last three decades. One may note the development of new technologies, starting with deliberate hybridization to marker-assisted breeding and the most recent advances in genetic engineering or genetic editing with CRISPR/Cas technology, as well as the advent of “digital agriculture” and “precision farming”. These technologies are of course protected by IP rights consisting of patents, plant variety rights, trademarks, trade secrets, and geographical indications.

These IP rights enable seed companies to prevent farmers from saving seeds of the protected variety, sharing it with their neighbours or selling it informally (“brown bagging”), but also to prevent competing plant breeders from using a protected variety in the development of a new variety (cumulative innovation), as well as to prevent competing seed producers from multiplying and marketing the protected variety without a license or using a protected product name and logos. Seed laws requiring compulsory seed certification with the aim to police seed quality also offer some form of protection to breeders, in the absence of IPRs.

Technology-driven growth has not been the only major transformation of this economic sector. Its consolidation, in particular in the factors of production segment, has been particularly important in recent years.

The consolidation of the factors of production segment

Concentration in the world and EU markets for seeds

In the seeds sector, a number of merger waves, starting in the mid-1980s, have led to the emergence of a relatively concentrated market structure of 6 big players thirty years later (Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, BASF, Bayer, and Dow).

The most recent merger wave started in July 2014 when Monsanto made a number of acquisition offers to Syngenta. These offers were rejected, but the Monsanto bid triggered a number of other M&A transactions that were announced in 2015 and 2016 between the various market leaders in the factors of production segment. In November 2015, Syngenta accepted the offer of ChemChina (which owns ADAMA, one of the largest agrochemical companies in the world). In December 2015, Dupont and Dow announced their merger. In September 2016, Bayer put forward a merger deal with Monsanto. During the same month, a deal was announced between two of the leaders in the market for fertilizers, Potash Corp and Agrium. In November 2015, it was reported that Deere & Co. (the leader in agricultural machinery) had agreed to buy Monsanto’s precision farming business. This deal was opposed by the US Department of Justice as it would have led Deere to control a significant part of the already highly concentrated US high-speed precision planting systems market.

The level of concentration varies according to the geographical market and the type of crop. If one looks at the situation in Europe, with regard to the sale of seeds, the market appears to be less concentrated than the global seed market. The picture is also slightly different for certain types of crop. For instance, it is reported that the seed market for sugar beets shows the largest concentration, with the first three companies (CR3) controlling a staggering 79% of the market (HHI: 2444), while for Maize seeds CR3 is 56% (HHI: 1425). High levels of concentration are also noted in the market for tomato seeds with Monsanto controlling 20% of registered seed varieties. What is more striking, however, is the speed of this consolidation process, as the bulk of this increase in the concentration level of the industry occurred in the last twenty years, the levels of concentration in the mid-1990s being close to those in 1985.

But the existence of a relatively concentrated market constitutes the tip of a much bigger consolidation iceberg between the market leaders that takes various forms: joint ventures, various cross-licensing and trait licensing agreements between the “Big Six”, distribution agreements, collaborations, research agreements and R&D strategic alliances, patent litigation settlements, to which one may add the recently concluded post-patent genetic trait agreements. Furthermore, one may not exclude the possibility of consolidation by stealth, in view of the important growth in common ownership in various sectors of the economy, as institutional investors simultaneously hold large blocks of other same-industry firms.

Which concentration level will be considered for merger purposes?

Market structure and concentration is, of course, just one step in the assessment of mergers and should be followed by a more thorough analysis of the possible anticompetitive effects and efficiencies, if the level of concentration resulting from the merger raises concerns. While the EU market for seeds could not be characterized as highly concentrated before this most recent merger wave, if one applies the conventional HHI measure, it remains possible that if the mergers first notified to the European Commission are approved without conditions with regard to seed markets, the concentration level that the Commission will consider when assessing the following notified merger will respectively increase. One may project that, as the Dow/Dupont merger has been recently cleared without conditions relating to the seed industry, it will be more difficult for the ChemChina/Syngenta merger to be approved without conditions, and even more so for the Bayer/Monsanto merger that will be the last one examined. Indeed, as the Commission made clear in its press release announcing its decision on the Dow/Dupont transaction,

The Commission examines each case on its own merits. In line with its case practice, the Commission assesses parallel transactions according to the so-called “priority rule” – first come, first served. The assessment of the merger between Dow and DuPont has been based on the currently prevailing market situation.

The assessment as to whether a merger would give rise to a Significant Impediment of Effective Competition (SIEC) is based on a counterfactual analysis where the post-merger scenario is compared to a hypothetical scenario absent the merger in question. The latter is normally taken to be the same as the situation before the merger is consummated. However, the Commission may take into account future changes to the market that can “reasonably be foreseen”. The identification of the proper counterfactual can be complicated by the fact that there can be more than one merger occurring in parallel in the same relevant market. Under the mandatory notification regime, the Commission does not factor into the counterfactual analysis a merger notified after the one under assessment. On the basis of the identified counterfactual, the Commission then proceeds with the definition of the relevant product and geographic market. That means that when assessing the Dow/Dupont merger, the Commission did not take into account the (future) market situation that would result from the notified merger between ChemChina and Syngenta, which was a known fact during the period of the assessment of the Dow/Dupont merger, as this was notified a few months after the notification of the Dow/Dupont transaction.

Explaining concentration levels

The consolidation of the industry may be explained by various factors at play. One may put forward a “natural” causes explanation, in view of the existence of endogenous sunk costs that may lead to a reduction in the number of firms active in this industry. John Sutton has famously argued that high concentration may persist in many manufacturing industries, even in the presence of a substantial increase in demand and output, when firms in the industry decide to incur, in addition to “exogenous sunk costs”, that is the costs that any firm will have to incur upon entry into the market, “endogenous sunk costs”, which include cost for R&D and other process innovations, with the aim to increase their price-cost margin. If all firms invest in endogenous sunk costs, in the long run this investment will produce little or no profit, as the competitive advantage gained by each firm’s investment will be largely ineffective if all other firms make a similar investment. This may lead to a fall in the industry’s profitability in the long-term and to a concentrated market. The recent consolidation movement in the industry may also be understood as a way to deal with externalities arising out of the expansion of the IP protection in recent decades.

Consolidation may also occur because of the merging companies’ quest for market share by purchasing potential competition, acquiring local market leaders or companies with diversified distribution networks and an established customer base. Market leaders may also strive to constitute one-stop shop platforms for farmers, combining an offering of seeds, traits, and chemicals, that would enhance the farmers’ technological dependence vis-à-vis large agrochemical and seed companies.

These large agro-chem groups forming a tight oligopoly will be able to exploit eventual network effects that may result from the shift towards data-driven agriculture and to block new entry in the factors of production markets. It is increasingly clear that market players in this industry have made the choice of positioning themselves as fully integrated providers, or the orchestrators/partners of an established network, offering a package of genetic transformation technology and genomics, traits, seeds, and chemicals. One may argue that this package of ‘complementary’ products and technologies may form a system competing with other systems (‘systems competition’). A question that would need to be tackled, when assessing the plausibility of the “system competition” thesis, would be to determine the existence of distinct relevant markets affected by the mergers. Could research, breeding and development/marketing of the various kinds of seeds be considered as part of the same or of different relevant markets? I address this question and the effects of these mergers on output, prices, and consumer choice in more detail in a separate paper (I. Lianos & D. Katalevsky, Merger Activity in the Factors of Production Segments of the Food Value Chain: A Critical Assessment (forthcoming)).

Theories and assessment of harm to innovation

Because of space constraints, I will only focus here on the assessment of the possible effects of these mergers on innovation. The emergence of integrated technology/traits/seeds/chemicals platforms may place barriers to new entry, as companies wishing to enter the market(s) would need to offer an integrated solution to farmers. This may stifle disruptive innovation if, in the absence of the merger, firms were able to enter one or two segments of the market (e.g. research and breeding) without the need to offer an “integrated” platform product. One should also take note of the fact that although traditional breeding methods required important resources and a considerable investment of time (because of long breeding cycles) and thus provided large economies of scale leading to the emergence of large market players, the latest genome-editing technologies, particularly CRISPR/Cas, may constitute more efficient and less resource intensive and time-consuming breeding methods, that offer opportunities for the emergence of more competitive and less integrated market structures in the traits/seeds segment(s).

Assessing the effects on innovation will be a crucial part of the merger assessment, for the European Commission as well as for all other competition authorities with jurisdiction to examine the specific merger(s). It is true that the EU market is mainly a conventional seed market, and not a GM seeds market, but it is also clear that all of the Big Six have an integrated strategy for R&D for all types of crops, working on “traditional” marker-assisted breeding, or the more recent forms of predictive breeding that have become commercially possible with the reduction of the cost of genome sequencing and the use of IT, but also on genetically engineered seeds. Assessing the possible effects of each merger on innovation will be a quite complex exercise in view of the need to focus not only on existing technologies but also on the possibility of new technologies emerging in the future.

Competition authorities may use different methodologies to assess these future effects: the definition of innovation markets as it is the case in the US, or a more general assessment of the existence of an effect on innovation constituting a SIEC in Europe. In its recent decision on the Dow/Dupont merger, the European Commission found that the merger may have reduced innovation competition for pesticides by looking to the ability and the incentive of the parties to innovate. The Commission emphasised that this analysis was not general but was based on “specific evidence that the merged entity would have lower incentives and a lower ability to innovate than Dow and DuPont separately” and “that the merged entity would have cut back on the amount they spent on developing innovative products”. That said, the Commission also mentioned the following, which I think may be of relevance to the competition assessment of the other pending mergers:

Only five companies (BASF, Bayer, Syngenta and the merging parties) are globally active throughout the entire R&D process, from discovery of new active ingredients (molecules producing the desired biological effect), their development, testing and regulatory registration, to the manufacture and sale of final formulated products through national distribution channels. Other competitors have no or more limited R&D capabilities (e.g. as regards geographic focus or product range). After the merger, only three global integrated players would remain to compete with the merged company, in an industry with very high barriers to entry. The number of players active in specific innovation areas would be even lower than at the overall industry level.

This type of assessment looks close to the filter of the existence of at least four independent technologies that constitute a commercially viable alternative, in addition to the licensed technology controlled by the parties to the agreement, that the Commission usually employs in its Transfer of Technology Guidelines in order to exclude the possibility that a licensing agreement may restrict competition and thus infringe Article 101 TFEU. There is no reason why the Commission would apply a different approach in the context of merger control. The above indicate that the Commission may view more negatively mergers that lead to less than four or three independent technologies in the relevant market(s).

Hidden/Not usually considered social costs

One may also assess the mergers in the seeds and agro-chem market from a public interest perspective, in view of the broader concerns animating public policy in this context and the existence of a nexus of international commitments with regard to biodiversity, sustainability, the right to food, as well as the emphasis put by some competition law regimes on public interest analysis (e.g. South Africa). The aim will be to assess the full social costs of these transactions, to the extent, of course, this is practically possible. This may be more achievable in merger control regimes where it is not courts that make the final decisions to clear, or not to clear, the merger, as there may be limits to the adjudication of certain broader public interest concerns, but integrated competition law agencies, or branches of the executive power, as it is formally the case in the EU.

Although public interest considerations do not form part of the substantive test of EU merger control, Article 21(4) EUMR includes a legitimate interest clause, which provides that Member States may take appropriate measures to protect three specified legitimate interests: public security, plurality of the media and prudential rules, and other unspecified public interests that are recognised by the Commission after notification by the Member State. If a Member State wishes to claim an additional legitimate interest, other than the ones listed above, it shall communicate this to the Commission. And the Commission must then decide, within 25 working days, whether the additional interest is compatible with EU law, and qualifies as an article 21(4) legitimate interest. This should not be excluded a priori, in particular in view of the importance of biodiversity, environmental protection, and employment in the EU treaties as well as broader international commitments to the right to food.

Food production is, of course, an area of great economic and geopolitical importance. According to UN estimates, by 2050 the world population will increase to nine billion, and catering to this additional demand would require an increase of 70% more food. This puts a strong pressure to increase output, which intensifies even more environmental impact, given increasing sustainability challenges (degradation of soil and reduction of arable land due to urban sprawl, water scarcity, biofuel consumption, climate change, etc.). Food security becomes an increasingly important issue on the agenda of the developing world.

The projected mergers in the seed and agro-chem industry will greatly affect the future control of food production and innovation in order to improve yields and feed the world. One may ask if such important decisions should be based on a narrowly confined test that mostly focuses on effects on output, price and to a certain extent innovation, or if one should adopt a broader consideration of the full social costs of such transactions, to the extent that these may be assessed and eventually quantified.

This may have the additional benefit to enable the participation in the merger process as third parties of a number of NGOs representing broader citizens’ interests in environmental protection and biodiversity, which is currently impossible with the quite narrow procedural requirements for third party intervenors in EU merger control (as the test for admission as third party intervenors is usually met only by competitors, suppliers, and customers). I think that all the affected interests and stakeholders should be offered an opportunity to participate in the decision-making process, thus increasing its efficiency (if one takes a participation-centred approach) and legitimacy, in particular for matters of major social importance as is the control of the global food supply chain(s).

It may be argued, if one takes a pessimistic, Malthusian perspective, that we are doomed to face famine and malnutrition, unless considerable amounts of investment are made in R&D in this sector. In view of the fall of public investments and the important role private investments have played in this area, one may argue that higher levels of consolidation in the sector could lead to higher profitability (at the expense of farmers) without necessarily leading to immediate effects on food prices, as the farming segment is driven by atomistic competition in most markets, and therefore farmers will not have the ability to pass on, at least in the short term, the eventual overcharges to the final consumers. Of course, such an approach may not factor in the effects of these mergers to the livelihood of around half a billion farmers in the world and their families, most of whom do not benefit from subsidies guaranteeing an acceptable standard of living.

It also assumes that higher profitability would lead to higher investments in R&D, a claim that has been recently questioned by research indicating that large firms prefer to retain earnings and distribute them to shareholders and the management rather than invest them in R&D. But, more generally, a simple question that one may ask is “are the projected mergers necessary in order to promote innovation in this sector”? Answering this question may bring a great sense of clarity as to the various dimensions of these mergers competition authorities would need to take into account. And the burden of proof to provide a convincing answer to this question remains on the notifying parties!

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Mergers, innovation, and agricultural biotechnology: Putting the squeeze on growers and consumers? [Ag-Biotech Symposium]

Diana L. Moss —  31 March 2017

Diana L. Moss is President of the American Antitrust Institute

Innovation Competition in the Spotlight

Innovation is more and more in the spotlight as questions grow about concentration and declining competition in the U.S. economy. These questions come not only from advocates for more vigorous competition enforcement but also, increasingly, from those who adhere to the school of thought that consolidation tends to generate procompetitive efficiencies. On March 27th, the European Commission issued its decision approving the Dow-DuPont merger, subject to divestitures of DuPont’s global R&D agrichemical assets to preserve price and innovation competition.

Before we read too much into what the EU decision in Dow-DuPont means for merger review in the U.S., remember that agriculture differs markedly across regions. Europe uses very little genetically modified (or transgenic) seed, whereas row crop acreage in the U.S. is planted mostly with it. This cautions against drawing major implications of the EU’s decision across jurisdictions.

This post unpacks the mergers of Dow-DuPont and Monsanto-Bayer in the U.S. and what they mean for innovation competition.

A Troubled Landscape? Past Consolidation in Agricultural Biotechnology

If approved as proposed, the mergers of Dow-DuPont and Monsanto-Bayer would reduce the field of Big 6 agricultural biotechnology (ag-biotech) firms to the Big 4. This has raised concerns about potentially higher prices for traits, seeds, and agrichemicals, less choice, and less innovation. The two mergers would make a 3rd wave of consolidation in the industry since the mid-1980s, when transgenic technology first emerged. Past consolidation has materially affected the structure of the markets. This is particularly true in crop seed, where relative to other agricultural input sectors, the level of concentration (and increases in concentration) over time is the highest.

Growers and consumers feel the effects of these changes. Consumers pay attention to their choices at the grocery store, which have arguably diminished and for which they pay prices that have risen at rates in excess of inflation. And the states in which agriculture is a major economic activity worry about their growers and the prices they pay for transgenic seed, agrichemicals, and fertilizers. Farmers we spoke to note, for example, that weeds that are resistant to the herbicide Roundup have evolved over time, making it no longer as effective as it once was. Dependence on seed and chemical cropping systems with declining effectiveness (due to resistance) has been met by the industry with newer and more expensive traited seed and different agrichemicals. With consolidation, these alternatives have dwindled.

These are not frivolous concerns. Empirical evidence shows that “technology fees” on transgenic corn, soybean, and cotton seed make up a significant proportion of total seed costs. The USDA notes that the prices of farm inputs, led by crop seed, generally have risen faster over the last 20 years than the prices farmers have received for their commodities. Moreover, seed price increases have outpaced yield increases over time. And finally, the USDA has determined that increasing levels of concentration in agricultural input markets (including crop seed) are no longer generally associated with higher R&D or a permanent rise in R&D intensity.

Putting the Squeeze on Growers and Consumers

The “squeeze” on growers and consumers highlights the fact that ag-biotech innovation comes at an increasingly higher price – a price that many worry will increase if the Dow-DuPont and Monsanto-Bayer mergers go through. These concerns are magnified by the structure of the food supply chain where we see a lot of growers and consumers at either end but not a lot of competition in the middle. In the middle are the ag-biotech firms that innovate traits, seeds, and agrichemicals; food processors such as grain millers and meatpackers; food manufacturers; distributors; and retail grocers.

Almost every sector has been affected by significant consolidation over the last two decades, some of which has been blocked, but a lot of which has not. For example, U.S. antitrust enforcers stopped the mergers of beef packers JBS and National Beef and broadline food distributors Sysco and USFoods. But key mergers that many believed raised significant competitive concerns went through, including Tyson-Hillshire Brands (pork), ConAgra-Horizon Mills (flour), Monsanto-Delta & Pine Land (cotton), and Safeway-Albertsons (grocery).

Aside from concerns over price, quality, and innovation, consolidation in “hourglass” shaped supply chains raises other issues. For example, it is often motivated by incentives to bulk up to bargain more effectively vis-a-vis more powerful input suppliers or customers. As we have seen with health care providers and health insurers, mergers for this purpose can trigger further consolidation, creating a domino effect. A bottlenecked supply chain also decreases resiliency. With less competition, it is more exposed to exogenous shocks such as bioterrorism or food-borne disease. That’s a potential food security problem.

Innovation Competition and the Agricultural Biotechnology Mergers

The Dow-DuPont and Monsanto-Bayer merger proposals raise a number of issues. One is significant overlap in seed, likely to result in a duopoly in corn and soybeans and a dominant firm (Monsanto) in cotton. A second concern is that the mergers would create or enhance substantial vertical integration. Where some arguments for integration can carry weight in a Guidelines analysis, here there is economic evidence from soybeans and cotton indicating that prices tend to be higher under vertical integration than under cross-licensing arrangements.

Moreover, the “platforms” resulting from the mergers are likely to be engineered for the purpose of creating exclusive packages of traits, seeds, and agrichemicals that are less likely to interoperate with rival products. This could raise entry barriers for smaller innovators and reduce or cut off access to resources needed to compete effectively. Indeed, one farmer noted the constraint of being locked into a single traits-seeds-chemicals platform in a market with already limited competition “[I] can’t mix chemicals with other companies’ products to remedy Roundup resistance.”

A third concern raised by the mergers is the potential elimination of competition in innovation markets. The DOJ/FTC Horizontal Merger Guidelines (§6.4) note that a merger may diminish innovation competition through curtailment of “innovative efforts below the level that would prevail in the absence of the merger.” This is especially the case when the merging firms are each other’s close competitors (e.g., as in the DOJ’s case against Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron). Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, and Bayer are four of only six ag-biotech rivals.

Preserving Parallel Path R&D Pipelines

In contrast to arguments that the mergers would combine only complementary assets, the R&D pipelines for all four firms show overlaps in major areas of traits, seeds, and crop protection. This supports the notion that the R&D pipelines compete head-to-head for technology intended for commercialization in U.S. markets. Maintaining competition in R&D ensures incentives remain strong to continue existing and prospective product development programs. This is particularly true in industries like ag-biotech (and pharma) where R&D is risky, regulatory approvals take time, and commercial success depends on crop planning and switching costs.

Maintaining Pro-Competitive Incentives to Cross-License Traits

Perhaps more important is that innovation in ag-biotech depends on maintaining a field of rivals, each with strong pro-competitive incentives to collaborate to form new combined (i.e., “stacked”) trait profiles. Farmers benefit most when there are competing stacks to choose from. About 60% of all stacks on the market in 2009 were the result of joint venture cross-licensing collaborations across firms. And the traits innovated by Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, and Bayer account for over 80% of traits in those stacks. That these companies are important innovators is apparent in GM Crop Database data for genetic corn, soybean and cotton “events” approved in the U.S. From 1991-2014, for example, the four companies account for a significant proportion of innovation in important genetic events.

Competition maximizes the potential for numerous collaborations. It also minimizes incentives to refuse to license, to impose discriminatory restrictions in technology licensing agreements, or to tacitly “agree” not to compete. Such agreements could range from deciding which firms specialize in certain crops or traits, to devising market “rules,” such as cross-licensing terms and conditions. All of this points to the importance of maintaining multiple, parallel R&D pipelines, a notion that was central to the EU’s decision in Dow-DuPont.

Remedies or Not? Preserving Innovation Competition

The DOJ has permitted two major ag-biotech mergers in the last decade, Monsanto’s mergers with DeKalb (corn) and Delta & Pine Land (cotton). In crafting remedies in both cases, the DOJ recognized the importance of innovation markets by fashioning remedies that focused on licensing or divesting patented technologies. The proposed mergers of Dow-DuPont and Monsanto-Bayer appear to be a different animal. They would reduce an already small field of large, integrated competitors, raise competitive concerns that have more breadth and complexity than in previous mergers, and are superimposed on growing evidence that transgenic technology has come at a higher and higher a price.Add to this the fact that a viable buyer of any divestiture R&D asset would be difficult to find outside the Big 6. Such a buyer would need to be national, if not global, in scale and scope in order to compete effectively

Add to this the fact that a viable buyer of any divestiture R&D asset would be difficult to find outside the Big 6. Such a buyer would need to be national, if not global, in scale and scope in order to compete effectively post-merger. Lack of scale and scope in R&D, financing, marketing, and distribution would necessitate cobbling together a package of assets to create and potentially prop up a national competitor. While the EU managed to pull this off, it is unclear whether the fact pattern in the U.S. would support a similar outcome. What we do know is that past mergers in the food and agriculture space have squeezed growers and consumers. Unless adequately addressed, these mega-deals stand to squeeze them even more.

In ag-biotech symposium, agriculture, agtech/biotech, antitrust, barriers to entry, european commission, markets, merger guidelines, technology , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Innovation trends in agriculture and their implications for M & A analysis [Ag-Biotech Symposium]

Michael Sykuta —  31 March 2017

Michael Sykuta is Associate Professor, Agricultural and Applied Economics, and Director, Contracting Organizations Research Institute at the University of Missouri.

The US agriculture sector has been experiencing consolidation at all levels for decades, even as the global ag economy has been growing and becoming more diverse. Much of this consolidation has been driven by technological changes that created economies of scale, both at the farm level and beyond.

Likewise, the role of technology has changed the face of agriculture, particularly in the past 20 years since the commercial introduction of the first genetically modified (GMO) crops. However, biotechnology itself comprises only a portion of the technology change. The development of global positioning systems (GPS) and GPS-enabled equipment have created new opportunities for precision agriculture, whether for the application of crop inputs, crop management, or yield monitoring. The development of unmanned and autonomous vehicles and remote sensing technologies, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e. UAVs, or “drones”), have created new opportunities for field scouting, crop monitoring, and real-time field management. And currently, the development of Big Data analytics is promising to combine all of the different types of data associated with agricultural production in ways intended to improve the application of all the various technologies and to guide production decisions.

Now, with the pending mergers of several major agricultural input and life sciences companies, regulators are faced with a challenge: How to evaluate the competitive effects of such mergers in the face of such a complex and dynamic technology environment—particularly when these technologies are not independent of one another? What is the relevant market for considering competitive effects and what are the implications for technology development? And how does the nature of the technology itself implicate the economic efficiencies underlying these mergers?

Before going too far, it is important to note that while the three cases currently under review (i.e., ChemChina/Syngenta, Dow/DuPont, and Bayer/Monsanto) are frequently lumped together in discussions, the three present rather different competitive cases—particularly within the US. For instance, ChemChina’s acquisition of Syngenta will not, in itself, meaningfully change market concentration. However, financial backing from ChemChina may allow Syngenta to buy up the discards from other deals, such as the parts of DuPont that the EU Commission is requiring to be divested or the seed assets Bayer is reportedly looking to sell to preempt regulatory concerns, as well as other smaller competitors.

Dow-DuPont is perhaps the most head-to-head of the three mergers in terms of R&D and product lines. Both firms are in the top five in the US for pesticide manufacturing and for seeds. However, the Dow-DuPont merger is about much more than combining agricultural businesses. The Dow-DuPont deal specifically aims to create and spin-off three different companies specializing in agriculture, material science, and specialty products. Although agriculture may be the business line in which the companies most overlap, it represents just over 21% of the combined businesses’ annual revenues.

Bayer-Monsanto is yet a different sort of pairing. While both companies are among the top five in US pesticide manufacturing (with combined sales less than Syngenta and about equal to Dow without DuPont), Bayer is a relatively minor player in the seed industry. Likewise, Monsanto is focused almost exclusively on crop production and digital farming technologies, offering little overlap to Bayer’s human health or animal nutrition businesses.

Despite the differences in these deals, they tend to be lumped together and discussed almost exclusively in the context of pesticide manufacturing or crop protection more generally. In so doing, the discussion misses some important aspects of these deals that may mitigate traditional competitive concerns within the pesticide industry.

Mergers as the Key to Unlocking Innovation and Value

First, as the Dow-DuPont merger suggests, mergers may be the least-cost way of (re)organizing assets in ways that maximize value. This is especially true for R&D-intensive industries where intellectual property and innovation are at the core of competitive advantage. Absent the protection of common ownership, neither party would have an incentive to fully disclose the nature of its IP and innovation pipeline. In this case, merging interests increases the efficiency of information sharing so that managers can effectively evaluate and reorganize assets in ways that maximize innovation and return on investment.

Dow and DuPont each have a wide range of areas of application. Both groups of managers recognize that each of their business lines would be stronger as focused, independent entities; but also recognize that the individual elements of their portfolios would be stronger if combined with those of the other company. While the EU Commission argues that Dow-DuPont would reduce the incentive to innovate in the pesticide industry—a dubious claim in itself—the commission seems to ignore the potential increases in efficiency, innovation and ability to serve customer interests across all three of the proposed new businesses. At a minimum, gains in those industries should be weighed against any alleged losses in the agriculture industry.

This is not the first such agricultural and life sciences “reorganization through merger”. The current manifestation of Monsanto is the spin-off of a previous merger between Monsanto and Pharmacia & Upjohn in 2000 that created today’s Pharmacia. At the time of the Pharmacia transaction, Monsanto had portfolios in agricultural products, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. After reorganizing assets within Pharmacia, three business lines were created: agricultural products (the current Monsanto), pharmaceuticals (now Pharmacia, a subsidiary of Pfizer), and chemicals (now Solutia, a subsidiary of Eastman Chemical Co.). Merging interests allowed Monsanto and Pharmacia & Upjohn to create more focused business lines that were better positioned to pursue innovations and serve customers in their respective industries.

In essence, Dow-DuPont is following the same playbook. Although such intentions have not been announced, Bayer’s broad product portfolio suggests a similar long-term play with Monsanto is likely.

Interconnected Technologies, Innovation, and the Margins of Competition

As noted above, regulatory scrutiny of these three mergers focuses on them in the context of pesticide or agricultural chemical manufacturing. However, innovation in the ag chemicals industry is intricately interwoven with developments in other areas of agricultural technology that have rather different competition and innovation dynamics. The current technological wave in agriculture involves the use of Big Data to create value using the myriad data now available through GPS-enabled precision farming equipment. Monsanto and DuPont, through its Pioneer subsidiary, are both players in this developing space, sometimes referred to as “digital farming”.

Digital farming services are intended to assist farmers’ production decision making and increase farm productivity. Using GPS-coded field maps that include assessments of soil conditions, combined with climate data for the particular field, farm input companies can recommend the types of rates of applications for soil conditioning pre-harvest, seed types for planting, and crop protection products during the growing season. Yield monitors at harvest provide outcomes data for feedback to refine and improve the algorithms that are used in subsequent growing seasons.

The integration of digital farming services with seed and chemical manufacturing offers obvious economic benefits for farmers and competitive benefits for service providers. Input manufacturers have incentive to conduct data analytics that individual farmers do not. Farmers have limited analytic resources and relatively small returns to investing in such resources, while input manufacturers have broad market potential for their analytic services. Moreover, by combining data from a broad cross-section of farms, digital farming service companies have access to the data necessary to identify generalizable correlations between farm plot characteristics, input use, and yield rates.

But the value of the information developed through these analytics is not unidirectional in its application and value creation. While input manufacturers may be able to help improve farmers’ operations given the current stock of products, feedback about crop traits and performance also enhances R&D for new product development by identifying potential product attributes with greater market potential. By combining product portfolios, agricultural companies can not only increase the value of their data-driven services for farmers, but more efficiently target R&D resources to their highest potential use.

The synergy between input manufacturing and digital farming notwithstanding, seed and chemical input companies are not the only players in the digital farming space. Equipment manufacturer John Deere was an early entrant in exploiting the information value of data collected by sensors on its equipment. Other remote sensing technology companies have incentive to develop data analytic tools to create value for their data-generating products. Even downstream companies, like ADM, have expressed interest in investing in digital farming assets that might provide new revenue streams with their farmer-suppliers as well as facilitate more efficient specialty crop and identity-preserved commodity-based value chains.

The development of digital farming is still in its early stages and is far from a sure bet for any particular player. Even Monsanto has pulled back from its initial foray into prescriptive digital farming (call FieldScripts). These competitive forces will affect the dynamics of competition at all stages of farm production, including seed and chemicals. Failure to account for those dynamics, and the potential competitive benefits input manufacturers may provide, could lead regulators to overestimate any concerns of competitive harm from the proposed mergers.

Conclusion

Farmers are concerned about the effects of these big-name tie-ups. Farmers may be rightly concerned, but for the wrong reasons. Ultimately, the role of the farmer continues to be diminished in the agricultural value chain. As precision agriculture tools and Big Data analytics reduce the value of idiosyncratic or tacit knowledge at the farm level, the managerial human capital of farmers becomes relatively less important in terms of value-added. It would be unwise to confuse farmers’ concerns regarding the competitive effects of the kinds of mergers we’re seeing now with the actual drivers of change in the agricultural value chain.

In ag-biotech symposium, agriculture, agtech/biotech, antitrust, economics, Efficiencies, law and economics, markets, mergers & acquisitions, technology , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Patents and mergers [Ag-Biotech Symposium]

shubhaghosh —  31 March 2017

Shubha Ghosh is Crandall Melvin Professor of Law and Director of the Technology Commercialization Law Program at Syracuse University College of Law

How should patents be taken into consideration in merger analysis? When does the combining of patent portfolios lead to anticompetitive concerns? Two principles should guide these inquiries. First, as the Supreme Court held in its 2006 decision Independent Ink, ownership of a patent does not confer market power. This ruling came in the context of a tying claim, but it is generalizable. While ownership of a patent can provide advantages in the market, such as access to techniques that are more effective than what is available to a competitor or the ability to keep competitors from making desirable differentiations in existing products, ownership of a patent or patent portfolio does not per se confer market power. Competitors might have equally strong and broad patent portfolios. The power to limit price competition is possibly counterweighted by competition over technology and product quality.

A second principle about patents and markets, however, bespeaks more caution in antitrust analysis. Patents can create information problems while at the same time potentially resolving some externality problems arising from knowledge spillovers. Information problems arise because patents are not well-defined property rights with clear boundaries. While patents are granted to novel, nonobvious, useful, and concrete inventions (as opposed to abstract, disembodied ideas), it is far from clear when a patented invention is actually nonobvious. Patent rights extend to several possible embodiments of a novel, useful, and nonobvious conception. While in theory this problem could be solved by limiting patent rights to narrow embodiments, the net result would be increased uncertainty through patent thickets and divided ownership. Inventions do not come in readily discernible units or engineered metes and bounds (despite the rhetoric).

The information problems created by patents do not create traditional market power in the sense of having some control over the price charged to consumers, but they do impose costs on competitors that can give a patent owner some control over market entry and the market conditions confronting consumers. The Court’s perhaps sanguine decoupling of patents and market power in its 2006 decision has some valence in a market setting where patent rights are somewhat equally distributed among competitors. In such a setting, each firm faces the same uncertainties that arise from patents. However, if patent ownership is imbalanced among firms, competition authorities need to act with caution. The challenge is identifying an unbalanced patent position in the marketplace.

Mergers among patent-owning firms invite antitrust scrutiny for these reasons. Metrics of patent ownership focusing solely on the quantity of patents owned, adjusting for the number of claims, can offer a snapshot of ownership distribution. But patent numbers need to be connected to the costs of operating the firm. Patents can lower a firm’s costs, create a niche for a particular differentiated product, and give a firm a head start in the next generation of technologies. Mergers that lead to an increased concentration of patent ownership may raise eyebrows, but those that lead to significant increase in costs to competitors and create potential impediments to market entry require a response from competition authorities. This response could be a blocking of the merger or perhaps more practically, in most instances, a divestment of the patent portfolio through requirements of licensing. This last approach is particularly appropriate where the technologies at issue are analogous to standard essential patents in the standard setting with FRAND context.

Claims of synergies should, in many instances, be met with skepticism when the patent portfolios of the merging companies are combined. While the technologies may be complementary, yielding benefits that go beyond those arising from a cross-licensing arrangement, the integration of portfolios may serve to raise costs for potential rivals in the marketplace. These barriers to entry may arise even in the case of vertical integration when the firms internalize contracting costs for technology transfer through ownership. Vertical integration of patent portfolios may raise costs for rivals both at the manufacturing and the distribution levels.

These ideas are set forth as propositions to be tested, but also general policy guidance for merger review involving companies with substantial patent portfolios. The ChemChina-Syngenta merger perhaps opens up global markets, but may likely impose barriers for companies in the agriculture market. The Bayer-Monsanto and Dow-DuPont mergers have questionable synergies. Even if potential synergies, these projected benefits need to be weighed against the very identifiable sources for market foreclosure. While patents may not create market power per se, according to the Supreme Court, the potential for mischief should not be underestimated.

In ag-biotech symposium, agriculture, agtech/biotech, antitrust, barriers to entry, intellectual property, patent, Patents, technology, tying , , , , , , , , ,
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Contestability theory in the real world [Ag-Biotech Symposium]

Levi Russell —  30 March 2017

Levi A. Russell is Assistant Professor, Agricultural & Applied Economics, University of Georgia and a blogger at Farmer Hayek.

Though concentration seems to be an increasingly popular metric for discussing antitrust policy (a backward move in my opinion, given the theoretical work by Harold Demsetz and others many years ago in this area), contestability is still the standard for evaluating antitrust issues from an economic standpoint. Contestability theory, most closely associated with William Baumol, rests on three primary principles. A market is perfectly contestable if 1) new entrants are not at a cost disadvantage to incumbents, 2) there are no barriers to entry or exit, and 3) there are no sunk costs. In this post, I discuss these conditions in relation to recent mergers and acquisitions in the agricultural chemical and biotech industry.

Contestability is rightly understood as a spectrum. While no industry is perfectly contestable, we expect that markets in which barriers to entry or exit are low, sunk costs are low, and new entrants can easily produce at similar cost to incumbents would be more innovative and that prices would be closer to marginal costs than in other industries. Certainly the agricultural chemical and biotech space does not appear to be very contestable, given the conditions above. There are significant R&D costs associated with the creation of new chemistries and new seed traits. The production and distribution of these products are likely to be characterized by significant economies of scale. Thus, the three conditions listed above are not met, and indeed the industry seems to be characterized by very low contestability. We would expect, then, that these mergers and acquisitions would drive up the prices of the companies’ products, leading to higher monopoly profits. Indeed, one study conducted at Texas A&M University finds that, as a result of the Bayer-Monsanto acquisition and DuPont/Pioneer merger with Dow, corn, soybean, and cotton prices will rise by an estimated 2.3%, 1.9%, and 18.2%, respectively.

These estimates are certainly concerning, especially given the current state of the agricultural economy. As the authors of the Texas A&M study point out, these estimates provide a justification for antitrust authorities to examine the merger and acquisition cases further. However, our dependence on the contestability concept as it pertains to the real world should also be scrutinized. To do so, we can examine other industries in which, according to the standard model of contestability, we would expect to find high barriers to entry or exit, significant sunk costs, and significant cost disadvantages for incumbents.

This chart, assembled by the American Enterprise Institute using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows the changes in prices of several consumer goods and services from 1996 to 2016, compared with CPI inflation. Industries in which there are high barriers to entry or exit, significant sunk costs, and significant cost disadvantages for new entrants such as automobiles, wireless service, and TVs have seen their prices plummet relative to inflation over the 20 year period. There has also been significant product innovation in these industries over the time period.

Disallowing mergers or acquisitions that will create synergies that lead to further innovation or lower cost is not an improvement in economic efficiency. The transgenic seeds created by some of these companies have allowed farmers to use less-toxic pesticides, providing both private and public benefits. Thus, the higher prices projected by the A&M study might be justified on efficiency grounds. The R&D performed by these firms has led to new pesticide chemistries that have allowed farmers to deal with changes in the behavior of insect populations and will likely allow them to handle issues of pesticide resistance in plants and insects in the future.

What does the empirical evidence on trends in prices and the value of these agricultural firms’ innovations described above imply about contestability and its relation to antitrust enforcement? Contestability should be understood not as a static concept, but as a dynamic one. Competition, more broadly, is the constant striving to outdo competitors and to capture economic profit, not a set of conditions used to analyze a market via a snapshot in time. A proper understanding of competition as a dynamic concept leads us to the following conclusion: for a market to be contestable such that incumbents are incentivized to behave in a competitive manner, the cost advantages and barriers to entry or exit enjoyed by incumbents must be equal to or less than an entrepreneur’s expectation of economic profit associated with entry.  Thus, a commitment to property rights by antitrust courts and avoidance of excessive licensure, intellectual property, and economic regulation by the legislative and executive branches is sufficient from an economic perspective to ensure a reasonable degree of contestability in markets.

In my next post I will discuss a source of disruptive technology that will likely provide some competitive pressure on the firms in these mergers and acquisitions in the near future.

In ag-biotech symposium, agriculture, agtech/biotech, antitrust, barriers to entry, economics, markets, mergers & acquisitions, technology , , , , , , , , , , ,
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