The Shifting Sands of Merger Enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission

This paper presents a statistical model for Federal Trade Commission merger enforcement. After reviewing the literature, economic and political variables are posited to explain bureaucratic merger decisions. Various probit models are estimated with the results suggesting that the Commission enhanced the consideration given to merger–specific efficiencies in response to exogenous pressure to increase merger enforcement. Overall, the tightening of merger policy appears to have been focused on the transactions lacking documented cost savings