Fall 2026Killers and keepersPublished 12 November 2026
The Innovation Clawback: Holding Merging Firms Accountable via an Outcome-Based Framework
Frédéric Jenny Emeritus Professor of Economics, ESSEC Business School; Affiliated Scholar, Dynamic Competition Initiative; Visiting Scholar, European University Institute
The paper proposes that competition authorities adopt an outcome-based approach to deal with anticompetitive mergers for which the parties provide a solidly based innovation defense. Such an approach would shift to the merging parties part of the risk of approval due to the stochastic nature of the innovation process.