How competition regulation can be adjusted to account for environmental effects of mergers

I will narrow down the topic of my doctoral research over the course of my master's studies, but my overall ambition is to apply an environmental economics viewpoint to industrial organisation and auction theory.

I would like to study how competition regulation can be adjusted to account for environmental effects of mergers. For instance, even if consumer prices may not rise following two companies merging it may happen that the environment is harmed, which causes losses to people and society in the long run. 2016 saw three large scale mergers in the agricultural-food-chemical sector.

This incentivised use of monocultural agriculture, meaning that a single high yield species is planted. While this may maximise production in the short run, it also decreases climate resilience and food security compared to polycultural agriculture, where several different species are planted. With the ongoing world-wide climate crisis. I believe these and many other environmental effects are increasingly important to take into account in competition policy if we are to achieve environmental sustainability and maximise consumer welfare in the long run.

Auction theory applied to conservation programmes is also of interest as a mechanism to optimally distribute financial assistance for the provision of environmental services.
Organisations like Defra, The US Environmental Protection agency and other national and multinomial bodies frequently give out funds to incentivise sustainable agricultural and manufacturing practices. However, as funds are limited these must be divided between applicants in a clever way to optimise the environmental and economic outcomes. For instance, a farmer may only make the most of financial assistant if they can get enough money to buy new water-saving irrigation equipment, which means that if less funds are allocated to them they cannot provide the required improvements. These sort of discontinuities and other complications (e.g. bid caps and credible measurement of environmental improvement) make these auctions complicated and can distort incentives.

I am also interested in conducting research in environmental econometrics. Climate change is a complex problem stretching over long timeframes. Analysis must, for instance, incorporate nonstationary in order to establish relationships stable enough to be of use in policy making. I would be especially interested in exploring such nonlinear models, non-stationarities and automatic model selection algorithms in this context.
Overall, my research will contribute to more sustainable environmental and economic outcomes in for instance mergers and support programmes, maximising welfare of people in the long run.