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A Suggested Revision Of The 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines (July 2021), Steven C. Salop May 2021

A Suggested Revision Of The 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines (July 2021), Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The DOJ/ FTC Vertical Merger Guidelines (VMGs) were adopted by the FTC in June 2020 by a party-line 3-2 party line over the dissent of the Acting Chair. One might expect that the VMGs will be withdrawn and/or revised, now that there is a Democratic majority. Revision is appropriate because the VMGs are both incomplete and overly permissible. This Suggested Revision can aid that process.


Potential Competition And Antitrust Analysis: Monopoly Profits Exceed Duopoly Profits, Steven C. Salop Apr 2021

Potential Competition And Antitrust Analysis: Monopoly Profits Exceed Duopoly Profits, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This short note prepared for an OECD meeting in June 2021 examines several antitrust issues involving analysis of potential competition. While the analysis is not new, it is still useful to collect them together in a unified fashion to show how they are related. In this regard, all the analysis and conclusions flow from the overarching (and obvious) points that exclusionary conduct and agreements that maintain monopoly power very often harm consumers, and that monopoly profits typically exceed the combined duopoly profits earned by the dominant firm and the entrant, if there is successful entry. While this is not inevitably …


Achieving Privacy: Costs Of Compliance And Enforcement Of Data Protection Regulation, Anupam Chander, Meaza Abraham, Sandeep Chandy, Yuan Fang, Dayoung Park, Isabel Yu Mar 2021

Achieving Privacy: Costs Of Compliance And Enforcement Of Data Protection Regulation, Anupam Chander, Meaza Abraham, Sandeep Chandy, Yuan Fang, Dayoung Park, Isabel Yu

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Is privacy a luxury for the rich world? Remarkably, there is a dearth of literature evaluating whether data privacy is too costly for companies to implement, or too expensive for governments to enforce. This paper is the first to offer a review of surveys of costs of compliance, and to summarize national budgets for enforcement. The study shows that while privacy may indeed prove costly for companies to implement, it is not too costly for governments to enforce. This study will help inform governments as they fashion and implement privacy laws to address the “privacy enforcement gap”—the disparity between the …


Dominant Digital Platforms: Is Antitrust Up To The Task?, Steven C. Salop Jan 2021

Dominant Digital Platforms: Is Antitrust Up To The Task?, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It has been one hundred years since the end of the Progressive Era and twenty years since the Microsoft settlement. This twenty-year period has seen the rise of the Internet and a new set of dominant platforms, as well as increased consolidation in the brick-and-mortar world. Antitrust has become more permissive. This Essay examines both issues: (i) the potential legal difficulties in reining in exclusionary conduct by dominant platforms; and (ii) merger under-enforcement. This Essay argues that it is necessary to strengthen antitrust enforcement. Consolidation through mergers and exclusionary conduct by dominant firms can harm consumers and workers and reduce …


Vertical Mergers In A Model Of Upstream Monopoly And Incomplete Information, Serge Moresi, David Reitman, Steven C. Salop, Yianis Sarafidis Jan 2021

Vertical Mergers In A Model Of Upstream Monopoly And Incomplete Information, Serge Moresi, David Reitman, Steven C. Salop, Yianis Sarafidis

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We examine the role of private information on the impact of vertical mergers. A vertical merger can improve the information that is available to an upstream monopolist because, after the merger, the monopolist can observe the cost of its downstream merger partner. In the pre-merger world, because the costs of the downstream firms are private information, the monopolist has incomplete information and cannot implement the monopoly outcome: The expected pre-merger equilibrium price of the downstream product is lower than the monopoly price. After a vertical merger, the equilibrium input price that is charged to the downstream rival can either increase …