The techniques used by the economic expert witnesses in FTC v. Whole Foods Market illustrate the sophistication and complexity of modern empirical merger analysis. In this issue of Antitrust, we explain the intuition behind these techniques and discuss how the results can be used to assess the...

The US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission receive notification regarding thousands of mergers per year, and must identify, from the entire set of mergers, those that require further investigation. Merger screens are critical to efficient and effective merger enforcement policy,...

The debate concerning whether the antitrust agencies under the Bush administration were lax with respect to merger review has led to a call to evaluate retrospectively the competitive effects of consummated mergers. Such information would help assess whether enforcement thresholds have been set...