This paper presents an analysis of merger enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission under the 1992 Merger Guidelines. Econometric analysis suggests that enforcement decisions are best predicted with the Herfindahl when the relevant theory is collusion and the number of significant rivals when...

In merger analysis, ease of entry, when present, trumps competitive concerns and allows market behavior, such as a merger, to proceed unchallenged. Thus, entry plays a key role in every antitrust study. That said, it is surprising that entry analysis is inconsistently defined, both in the courts...

The modern Merger Guidelines have controlled merger policy for over three decades. Economic theory has evolved (and continues to evolve) and revisions of the Merger Guidelines have integrated some of these considerations into the merger review methodology. This paper tabulates and evaluates...

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...

Critical Loss Analysis is an empirical implementation of the hypothetical monopolist test for market definition contained in the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission Horizontal Merger Guidelines. As such, it compares the breakeven Critical Loss with a prediction of the Actual Loss...

.This paper contains an annotated bibliography of the studies associated with transparency in merger policy at the Federal Trade Commission. After a brief introduction to provide context and a list of topics addressed in the particular studies, the 41 papers are briefly reviewed, with links to...

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...

Over the last decade, merger retrospectives have become increasingly popular. However, it is far from clear what implications can be drawn from these analyses, because the results suffer from a sample selection problem. This paper uses models of the Federal Trade Commission's enforcement...

The Hart Scott Rodino program, coupled with the modern Merger Guidelines, has structured merger enforcement for the last twenty years. This paper tabulates and evaluates information from Federal Trade Commission merger reviews. While horizontal mergers predominate, vertical, potential...