Department of Justice. Antitrust Division Merger Guidelines. [47 Fed. Reg. 28,493 (1982)]

1983 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 649 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Merger Guidelines ◽  
Antitrust Division

scholarly journals Judicial Response to the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
Carl Shapiro ◽  
Howard Shelanski
Keyword(s):  
Federal Trade Commission ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Market Concentration ◽  
Horizontal Merger ◽  
Average Increase ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Merger Guidelines ◽  
Direct Competition ◽  
The Government ◽  
The U.S

AbstractWe study how the courts have responded to the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Looking at decided cases, we find that both the government and merging parties rely on the 2010 Guidelines in presenting their cases, each side respectively arguing that it should win if the court properly follows them . The 2010 Guidelines had the strongest effect on the case law in the area of unilateral effects, where a number of courts have embraced them in ways that clearly depart from earlier decisions. The case law now exhibits much greater receptivity to a government showing that the merger will lead to higher prices simply due to the loss of direct competition between the two merging firms. The courts also have followed the 2010 Guidelines by more willingly defining markets around targeted customers. We do not detect any effect on decided cases of the higher concentration thresholds found in the 2010 Guidelines. Both the average pre-merger level of market concentration and the average increase in market concentration alleged by the government in litigated cases to date declined after 2010 .

Deregulating antitrust policy

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 871-890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Stelzner ◽  
Mayuri Chaturvedi
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Mergers And Acquisitions ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Market Concentration ◽  
Antitrust Policy ◽  
Horizontal Merger ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Economic Variables ◽  
Merger Guidelines ◽  
Half Century

Abstract Starting in the 1980s, market concentration began to rise dramatically decreasing competition and increasing market power for the firms that remain. Such developments have important effects on a number of economic variables such as the efficiency of our economy and income inequality. Thus, it is important to ask: how has the administration of antitrust policy changed over the last half century? To shed more light on these important questions, we explore both change in policy outline by the Department of Justice in its Horizontal Merger Guidelines and change in administrative actions looking at both secondary requests for mergers and acquisitions of different sizes, and pre, post and change in Herfindahl–Hirschman Index in mergers and acquisitions contested by the Department of Justice through the courts.

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