Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Revising The U.S. Vertical Merger Guidelines: Policy Issues And An Interim Guide For Practitioners, Steven C. Salop, Daniel P. Culley

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Mergers and acquisitions are a major component of antitrust law and practice. The U.S. antitrust agencies spend a majority of their time on merger enforcement. The focus of most merger review at the agencies involves horizontal mergers, that is, mergers among firms that compete at the same level of production or distribution.

Vertical mergers combine firms at different levels of production or distribution. In the simplest case, a vertical merger joins together a firm that produces an input (and competes in an input market) with a firm that uses that input to produce output (and competes in an output market). …