Acquisitions in the media industry – one of several projects that are receiving research grants from the Swedish Competition Authority

The Swedish Competition Authority provides funding to selected research projects at Swedish universities. This year, SEK 4.1 million has been awarded to new research projects.

“Greater understanding of how markets function contributes to societal development. The purpose of the research funding being handed out by the Swedish Competition Authority is to support the production of new knowledge within the field of competition and procurement and thus contribute to that development”, says Rikard Jermsten, Director-General of the Swedish Competition Authority.

One of the new research projects will study the impact of mergers and acquisitions with the media industry on competition and the quality of news. The research project is led by Marcel Garz, associate professor at Jönköping International Business School.

Anna Tzanaki, senior lecturer at the Department of Law at Lund University, has been awarded a research grant to examine what role a competition authority might have in terms of stimulating effective programmes for compliance with competition rules.

A research project entitled “Welfare markets in home care services: how do users choose?” has been granted research funding. Paula Blomqvist, associate professor at the Department of Government at Uppsala University, will study the functioning of home care service markets and the conditions under which competition between providers leads to increased quality and to enhancing the power of users.

How regulatory gaps in outsourced markets – the consequences of which include incomplete contracts – affect the stakeholders’ behaviour when contracting entities organise procurements and companies submit tenders will be investigated by Gunnar Alexandersson, PhD at the Stockholm School of Economics.

Currently there are no empirical measures of what impact algorithmic pricing has on the likelihood of price coordination. Professor Niklas Rudholm at the Institute of Retail Economics will investigate the impact of algorithmic pricing on the incidence of price coordination in seven international markets.

Professor Richard Friberg at the Department of Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics is being granted research funding to arrange an academic conference for Nordic researchers who work in the field of industrial organisation. The purpose of the conference is to disseminate knowledge relating to competition research among researchers in Sweden and abroad.

In addition to the six new research projects, grants are also being given to five ongoing projects.

Joakim Wallenklint, Research Director, +46 8-700 16 03, joakim.wallenklint@kkv.se