Merger statistics and merger policy

It is widely believed that the 1950 amendment of Section 7 of the Clayton Antitrust Act has diverted merger activity away from horizontal and into conglomerate forms. Examination of the Federal Trade Commission Large Merger Series replicates existing substantiation of this belief, but only up until 1968. Further examination of the data shows a perceptible weakening of the horizontal-merger deterrent in the following eight years. One possible explanation is that all the attention devoted to the “conglomerate problem” after 1968 implied that horizontal mergers were neither as bad nor as illegal as existing case law had made them.     

U.S. merger policy and the 1992 Merger Guidelines

This article reviews the empirical evidence regarding the effects of mergers on corporate efficiency. In light of this evidence it then evaluates the effectiveness of U.S. merger policy as articulated in the 1992 Guidelines of the Department of Justice. It argues that the 1992 Guidelines and the U.S. Government's policies toward business more generally over the past 12 years have been characterized by a bias for bigness. It concludes that this bias will only be eliminated when government authorities in charge of merger policy recognize that many mergers lower economic efficiency and design and enforce their policies accordingly.     

Applying “Merger Guidelines” market definition to (de)regulatory policy: Pros and cons

Since initially presented in the 1982 Department of Justice Horizontal Merger Guidelines, market definition has been adopted nearly worldwide as a framework to see if a merger would substantially lessen competition. This framework is useful for addressing the similarly counterfactual question of whether forbearance from regulation would lead to an increase in prices. In this context, however, the usefulness of a merger-based market definition is limited. Because the alternative to forbearance is regulation, and since some regulated rates may be below competitive levels, finding that deregulation would lead to market power as defined for mergers need not justify continued regulation. Forbearance in telecommunications highlights market definition questions regarding gross vs. marginal substitutes, dynamic efficiencies, and service bundling. It also reveals ambiguities in the meaning of “geographic market.” Market definition also has limited applicability if regulation exists not to prevent high prices but the abuse of dominance through predatory pricing.     

Effects of the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines on Merger Review: Based on Ten Years of Practical Experience

Review of Industrial Organization - We assess how the 2010 Merger Guidelines have been applied by agencies and courts. We conclude that:     

关于企业并购的三个理论问题

众所周知，企业的成长模式主要有两种，一种是所谓的内涵发展模式，即主要通过企业自身所经营的产品或服务市场份额的扩大来达到企业成长的目的；另一种是所谓的外部扩张模式，即在企业自身产品经营的基础上有意识地实施对外的收购兼并来达到迅速成长的目的。与上述两种成长模式相对应，我们可以把第一种模式下的企业经营方式称之为产品经营，而把第二种模式下的企业经营方式称之为资本经营。     

公司并购中的情报保密-- 并购成功的关键

本文试图通过米塔尔钢铁公司收购美国国际钢铁集团、联想收购IPM PC业务过程中采取的情报保密措施，就公司并购过程中的情报保密做一粗浅探讨。     

The 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines: A brief critique

The 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines of the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission represent an improvement over previous horizontal merger guidelines in certain respects especially in the treatment of entry. However, the 1992 Guidelines continue to suffer from problems with market definition methodology. Also, the softening of HHI presumptions and burdens and the incorporation of an increased competitive effects section seem to reduce the effectiveness of the Guidelines.The views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and not of any state or federal agency.     

Potential Competition: The Bell Atlantic/NYNEX Merger

Review of Industrial Organization -     

Economics at the FTC: Retrospective Merger Analysis with a Focus on Hospitals

Economists at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) support the agency’s competition and consumer protection missions. In this year’s essay we discuss efforts at the FTC and elsewhere to examine empirically the competitive effects of mergers. This work has ranged from subjective interview-based reports on post-merger behavior to more objective analyses of post-merger performance based on rigorous empirical analysis of prices. In this essay we discuss the merger retrospective literature generally, and focus on the FTC staff’s recent empirical analyses of consummated hospital mergers.     

Effect of Merger on Market Price and Product Quality: American and US Airways

Review of Industrial Organization - In this paper, I analyze the effect of the merger between American Airlines (AA) and US Airways (US) on market price and product quality. I use...     

Non-competition Goals and Their Impact on South African Merger Control: An Empirical Analysis

Review of Industrial Organization - Merger control regimes in various jurisdictions—especially in Africa—feature non-competition objectives in addition to conventional goals, such as...     

Antitrust Versus Regulatory Merger Review: The Case of Electricity

This paper focuses on the implications of multi-agency review of electricity mergers. It highlights fundamental differences between regulatory and antitrust merger enforcement procedures–ranging from standards of review to data collection, economic analysis, and remedies. Such disparities potentially introduce costly and potentially conflicting redundancy into the merger review process. Illustrative examples are drawn from a number of cases, including apparent inconsistencies across applicant-filed analyses in FERC merger cases. Absent the delegation of competition analysis to the antitrust agencies, the paper makes the case for harmonizing review across regulators and antitrust enforcers.     

EU animal welfare policy: Developing a comprehensive policy framework

Many EU citizens are concerned about animal welfare. The policy literature has responded to these concerns by suggesting a variety of policy instruments to policy makers. However, a gap in knowledge exists regarding which instrument should be applied under which conditions in the policy environment. This article presents the results of multiple inductive case studies of eight European countries to better understand the contingencies to animal welfare policy instruments and to further complement the framework of policy instruments available to policy makers. The qualitative evidence from this study is presented in the form of a policy decision tree indicating instruments likely to be effective under given conditions. The findings suggest that a “one size fits all” solution for animal welfare in the EU is unlikely to be effective and that although a market-based policy within the current EU context is in many cases inevitable, the barriers are numerous and require policy instruments tailored to the specific context.     

Department of justice and federal trade commission: Horizontal Merger Guidelines

Department of justice and federal trade commission: Horizontal Merger Guidelines     

The 1968 Merger Guidelines: In Praise of Committing to Restraint

The 1968 Merger Guidelines of the U.S. Department of Justice remain a model for competition agencies around the world because they courageously articulated when the Department would exercise its prosecutorial discretion by not challenging a horizontal merger.     

Comment on “Merger Policy in the United States”

This paper comments briefly on a merger policy article by Dennis Mueller. It concurs with Mueller's judgment that X-efficiency consequences are of crucial relevance in developing a sound antitrust policy toward mergers. It agrees also that firms proposing mergers overstepping structural guidelines should be permitted an efficiencies defense, but it stresses the difficulties of making ex ante efficiency predictions.     

政策要闻

俄取消向白、哈关税同盟国出口原油的关税优惠根据2月24日签署的俄罗斯第88号政府令,俄从3月1日起取消向白俄罗斯和哈萨克斯坦两个关税同盟国出口原油的关税优惠,统一为253.6美元/吨.     

政策要闻

(2009年11月)日本太阳能发电剩余电力收购价格翻番日本政府自11月1日起对家庭、学校等安装的太阳能设备发电剩余电力收购实行新制度,电力公司以每千瓦时48日元的价格收购剩余电力,是原来收购价格的2倍.新制度还规定电力公司在10年内有义务收购剩余电力.