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...

Antitrust remedies -- criminal and civil, public and private, penalties and injunctions -- are supposed to “eliminate the effects of the illegal conduct” and “restore competition.” In pursuing these goals, courts and enforcers are guided by the standard of economic efficiency and by...

If a firm is a nexus of contracts, then it is just the sum of its counterparties. It follows that when a firm monopolizes a particular market and exploits its power to impose unfavorable terms on a counterparty, the firm necessarily exploits one counterparty for the benefit of another, because...

Focusing on collusive behavior, this chapter outlines the complexity associated with both the ex ante design of antitrust compliance programs and the ex post assessment of their impact. Following an interdisciplinary review of relevant literature, the chapter provides a structured cost–benefit...

We analyze the effectiveness of antitrust regulation in a repeated oligopoly model in which both fines and detection probabilities depend on the cartel price. Such fines are closer to actual guidelines than the commonly assumed fixed fines. Under a constant detection probability, we confirm the...

We investigate the impact of cartel breakdowns on merger activity. Merging information on cartel cases decided by the European Commission (EC) between 2000 and 2011 with a detailed data set of worldwide merger activity, we find that, first, the average number of all merger transactions increase...

A bundled discount occurs when a seller conditions a discount or rebate on the buyer's purchaser or two or more different products. Firms that produce fewer than all the good in the bundle find it difficult to compete because they must amortize the discount across a smaller range of goods. For...