The 2010 revision of the Merger Guidelines highlighted the importance of both economic modeling of the post-merger competitive process and effects evidence, defined as information able to predict the transaction’s likely competitive effect. With sufficient data, it is possible to see how...

The rise of unilateral effects analysis, as quantified by merger simulation, creates the potential to balance anticompetitive effects and efficiencies and improve the merger review process. Unfortunately, sophisticated economic models impose a tight structure on the analytical process, one that...

To be admissible in federal court under the Daubert standard, expert economic testimony must be (1) based on scientific analysis and (2) aid the dispute resolution process. Expert evidence should be considered scientific when (1) it meets Karl Popper’s falsification standard and (2) some...

The Hart Scott Rodino program, coupled with the modern Merger Guidelines has structured merger enforcement for the last twenty years. This paper reviews all of the filings on which the Commission issued a second request. While horizontal mergers predominate, vertical, potential competition and...

Sometimes what appears to be a little, almost imperceptible change can have a huge impact on a policy regime. The recently revised DOJ/FTC Horizontal Merger Guidelines contain such a change, as the document recognizes the importance of Critical Loss Analysis in defining a market, but introduces...

A recent edition of the CPI Antitrust Chronicle provided a range of perspectives on the applicability of the Upward Pricing Pressure (UPP) model to merger analysis. A number of key insights (e.g., the relevance of market definition, the usefulness of an UPP screen, the similarity between UPP and...

Economists have two basic methodologies: structuralism, in which formal economic models control the analysis, and experimentalism, in which economic theory guides the analysis, but data from experiments determines the policy recommendation. The choice between the two approaches is often quite...

This paper explores the Federal Trade Commission’s unilateral effects analysis from the perspectives of both the 1992 and 2010 Merger Guidelines. Historical enforcement data is used to define a diversion benchmark of 30 percent, but is unable to detect a role for the margin variable. A related...

Barriers to entry are a necessary, but not sufficient condition for a merger to adversely affect competition. As a barrier definition must be linked to the specific theory of competitive concern under review to be meaningful, a theoretical barrier definition is unlikely to be useful. Instead, an...