Several factors suggest the Ayres-Nalebuff scenario is unlikely to occur. First, producing a media player is not difficult: Cnet.com lists 31 free players. Second, although firms that own encoding standards can make money by licensing the standard, to monopolize encoding, Microsoft would need to...

Merger analysis is a field in which economic theory is systematically applied, day-in, day-out. Economics structures the definition of the relevant market, and then economics drives the evaluation of the likely competitive effect of the merger. Exactly which models are used by Federal Trade...