The Global Antitrust Institute (“GAI”) respectfully submits this Comment to the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) in connection with their Request for Information on Merger Enforcement (“Merger RFI”) This comment addresses the questions...

This Comment focuses on Section 7: Potential and Nascent Competition of the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission's January 18, 2022, Request for Information on Merger Enforcement. Despite information and uncertainty problems with assessing potential and nascent competition, the...

We compare the prevailing system of compulsory pre-merger notification with the Australian system of voluntary pre-merger notification. It is shown that, for a non-trivial set of parameter values, a perfect Bayesian equilibrium exists in mixed strategies in which the regulator investigates...

We analyze evidence production in merger control as a delegation problem in an inquisitorial competition policy system. The antitrust agency’s incentives to produce evidence on the efficiency of a merger proposal depend critically on its action set. Allowing for a compromising remedy solution...

This paper tests a model of political control of the bureaucracy using a data set of mergers evaluated by the Federal Trade Commission between 1983 and 2000. The results support a sophisticated control model in which the President sets the agenda within the scope of policies acceptable to...

Many economists believe that unilateral effects analysis should dominate the merger review process for differentiated products. However, it is far from clear if these theoretical models are broadly applicable, as they impose monopoly-style entry assumptions that constrain the competitive...

We quantify externalities on profitability and market shares of competing firms in oligopolistic markets through the transition from an n to an n-1 player oligopoly after a merger. Competitors are identified via the European Commission's market investigations and our methodology allows us to...

In its judgment of May 28, 2020, CK Telecoms UK Investments Ltd v. Commission, the EU General Court (GC) has made several fundamental observations on the construal of the SIEC-test with regard to horizontal mergers. The GC embraces a more economic approach, while tightening the standard of...

We describe the quantitative modeling techniques that are used in horizontal merger review for the evaluation of unilateral effects, and discuss how the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines helped legitimize these methods and motivate scholarly research. We cover markets that feature...