This book chapter (forthcoming in Antitrust Stories) tells the story of the FTC's successful 1997 effort to block the proposed Staples/Office Depot merger. It describes the competing presentations of the FTC and the merging firms during the preliminary injunction hearing and places that trial in...

An increasing body of empirical evidence is documenting trends toward rising concentration, profits, and markups in many industries around the world since the 1980s. Two major criticisms of these studies is that concentration and market shares are poorly measured at the national industry level...

In 2016 the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) lost motions for preliminary injunction in two separate hospital mergers. In both cases the district courts rejected the FTC's geographic market definition based on flawed interpretations of the “hypothetical monopolist” test. Fortunately, the...

We describe a simple initial indicator of whether a proposed merger between rivals in a differentiated product industry is likely to raise prices through unilateral effects. Our diagnostic calibrates upward pricing pressure (UPP) resulting from the merger, based on the price/cost margins of the...

Even a cursory review of the Antitrust Division's new Merger Guidelines reveals that they revolve around the concept of “concentration” and advance a particular method of measuring it – the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. While concentration is scarcely a new idea in the antitrust treatment of...

On September 4, 1996, the two largest office superstore chains in the United States, Office Depot and Staples, announced their agreement to merge. Seven months later, the Federal Trade Commission voted 4 to 1 to oppose the merger on the grounds that it was likely to harm competition and lead to...

This paper provides a comprehensive discussion of the deterrence properties of a competition policy regime. On the basis of the economic theory of law enforcement we identify several factors that are likely to affect its degree of deterrence: 1) sanctions and damages; 2) financial and human...

We examine antitrust rules in a two county general equilibrium trade model, contrasting national and multilateral (cooperative) determination of competition policy, exploring the properties of the policy equilibrium. It is not imperfect competition, but variation in competitive stance between...

The ministerial proposal for a 10th amendment of the German competition law particularly addresses abuse control and seeks to tighten this pillar of competition policy against the background of the challenges from the digital economy. Next to extending the classic policy instruments of abuse...