Thursday, September 5, 2024
Economics in the 2023 Merger Guidelines: Three Areas of Concern
Economics in the 2023 Merger Guidelines: Three Areas of Concern
Abstract
In December 2023, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) jointly released the 2023 Merger Guidelines (MG). The MGs are improved relative to the July 2023 Draft Merger Guidelines (DMG), and we have found things to like in the MG. However, many elements have not changed, and several of these worry us. In particular, as economists, we are concerned that the MG at times appear to substitute hardline rules and subjective priors for economic evidence.
In this chapter, we focus on the economics of three topics covered by the MG: market definition, non-horizontal mergers, and efficiencies. For each topic, we discuss the MG’s approach as compared with prior versions of the Merger Guidelines and discuss what the approach gets right – and wrong – from an economic perspective using examples drawn from recently litigated matters.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/antitrustprof_blog/2024/09/economics-in-the-2023-merger-guidelines-three-areas-of-concern.html
