Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

Modern Economic Analysis And Antitrust Law: A Guide, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This book presents a modern economics approach to antitrust law. It expands upon and supplements traditional legal analysis of antitrust law and policy. It does so by analyzing antitrust legal standards and case law through the lenses of industrial organization economics and decision theory. The work is intended to be a comprehensive introductory guide for students, practitioners, and anyone else interested in learning the core of modern antitrust economics. Understanding the economics of antitrust and decision theory and applying that reasoning to specific cases and issues are critical steps for successfully studying and practicing antitrust law and policy. It treats …

Adjudicating Fake News, Filippo Lancieri, Caio Mario Da Silva Pereira Neto, Rodrigo Moura Karolczak, Barbara Marchiori De Assis

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On July 30, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on imports from Brazil and sanctioned a sitting Brazilian Supreme Court Justice, both partially because of Brazil’s online content moderation decisions. This is an extreme, but not an isolated event: worldwide, legislators and regulators struggle to craft public policies that address problems of disinformation and online harassment while protecting the freedom of expression—leading to increasing international confrontations. One key question in content moderation is content adjudication—or who is responsible for deciding what type of speech violates the law and should be taken down (or not). This article contributes to …

Rethinking Legal Models For Aligning U.S.-African Trade And The Afcfta, Katrin Kuhlmann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The U.S.-African trade relationship has become increasingly volatile and conditional, with significant implications for supply chains, trade corridors, and regional and global markets. This relationship has historically been based on a unilateral, preferential legal approach through a trade preference programme – the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) – under which individual countries petition for eligibility to receive duty-free treatment. AGOA expired in September 2025 in the midst of U.S. tariffs, but in early 2026 the programme was retroactively reauthorised through December 2026, with further application subject to “modernisation” and alignment with the “America First” policy. While many see reauthorisation …

Rethinking The Key Role Of Private Antitrust Enforcement, Filippo Lancieri

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article focuses on the institutional design of American competition policy. It argues that any long-term effective revival of U.S. antitrust policy requires a better acknowledgement of the key and irreplaceable role played by private litigation and proposes a rethink of private anti-trust enforcement policy.

To unpack the nuanced interconnection between public and private competition enforcement, the Article begins by tracing the rise and fall of private antitrust. It builds on a novel, hand-coded, and comprehensive analysis of the entire Supreme Court antitrust track record—all 474 decisions over 130 years—to outline how an ideologically …

Towards An Effective Merger Review Policy: A Defence Of Rebuttable Structural Presumptions, Filippo Lancieri, Tommaso Valletti

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We discuss the design of an effective merger review policy for the 21st century. We argue that the practice of the past decades is inadequate and propose a move towards much stronger rebuttable structural presumptions. These presumptions establish that all mergers above certain thresholds are illegal unless the merging parties can prove that merger-specific efficiencies will be shared with consumers and yield tangible welfare gains. These presumptions are grounded on solid economics and also acknowledge the real-world limitations in enforcement resources and information asymmetries between companies and regulators. We outline how to establish such presumptions in practice, defending the implementation …

Merger Enforcement Statistics: 2001-2020, Logan Billman, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article summarizes merger enforcement data for the period between 2001 and 2020, using a database created by the authors. The database lists the identity and outcome of every transaction that received a second request during this 20-year period. The database also lists the identity and outcome of every challenge to an already-consummated merger during the period. To our knowledge, it is the only complete database for the listing and outcomes of all such transactions. The goal of creating the database is to provide further information on merger enforcement, which hopefully can inform policy and spur additional analysis. We describe …

Antitrust Worker Protections: Rejecting Multi-Market Balancing As A Justification For Anticompetitive Harms To Workers, Laura Alexander, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Anticompetitive conduct toward upstream trading partners may have the effect of benefiting downstream consumers even as the conduct harms the firms’ workers or suppliers. Defendants may attempt to justify their upstream conduct—and may rely on the ancillary restraints doctrine in doing so—on the grounds that the restraints create efficiencies benefitting ` purchasers, rather than focusing solely on the impact of the restraint on the workers or suppliers in the upstream market. Such balancing of harms against out-of-market benefits achieved by a different group should be rejected by antitrust doctrine generally, and specifically in the case of harms to workers. This …

Fixing "Litigating The Fix", Steven C. Salop, Jennifer E. Sturiale

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Merging firms have increasingly been asking trial courts to adjudicate their merger “as remedied” by a voluntary “fix.” These are remedies that have been rejected by (or never proposed to) the agency. This procedure is known as Litigating-the-Fix” (“LTF”). This article proposes a judicial procedure for managing cases in which the merging parties attempt to LTF. Our recommendations flow from a decision theory approach informed by the relevant LTF case law, the merger enforcement record, the language and goals of Section 7, and an economic analysis of the incentives of the parties and agencies created by LTF. Our recommendation addresses …

Rebuilding Platform Antitrust: Moving On From Ohio V. American Express, Steven C. Salop, Daniel Francis, Lauren Sillman, Michaela Spero

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Now that the immediate fallout from the Supreme Court’s blockbuster Amex decision has cooled, this Article aims to give a first draft of its place in antitrust history and to offer a roadmap for the next stage of the evolution of platform antitrust analysis. We focus on several issues that have not been fully analyzed in the literature. First, we argue that, rather than mangling the law of market definition, the Court should have explicitly permitted multi-market balancing of effects across the separate markets in which the platform was active. Second, we propose standards to implement such balancing in cases …

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

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

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

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

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 …

The 2010 Hmgs Ten Years Later: Where Do We Go From Here?, Steven C. Salop, Fiona Scott Morton

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this short article, which is part of a RIO Symposium on the Tenth Anniversary of the 2010 Merger Guidelines, we suggest a number of improvements that should be considered in the next revision of the Guidelines. Our analysis is based on the observation that horizontal merger policy has suffered from under-enforcement. We provide evidence that the enforcement agencies face significant resource constraints which require a triage process that inevitably leads to under-enforcement. In light of merger law placing greater weight on avoiding false negatives and under-deterrence than false positive and over-deterrence, the article suggests a number of ways in …

Vertical Merger Enforcement Actions: 1994–April 2020, Steven C. Salop, Daniel P. Culley

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We have revised our earlier listing of vertical merger enforcement actions by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission since 1994. This revised listing includes 66 vertical matters beginning in 1994 through April 2020. It includes challenges and certain proposed transactions that were abandoned in the face of Agency concerns. This listing can be treated as an Appendix to Steven C. Salop and Daniel P. Culley, Revising the Vertical Merger Guidelines: Policy Issues and an Interim Guide for Practitioners, 4 JOURNAL OF ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT 1 (2016).

Asymmetric Stakes In Antitrust Litigation, Erik Hovenkamp, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Private antitrust litigation often involves a dominant firm being accused of exclusionary conduct by a smaller rival or entrant. Importantly, the firms in such cases generally have asymmetric stakes: the defendant typically has a much larger financial interest on the line. We explore the broad policy implications of this fact using a novel model of litigation with endogenous effort. Asymmetric stakes lead dominant defendants to invest systematically more resources into litigation, causing the plaintiff's success probability to fall below the efficient level--a distortion that carries over to ex ante settlements. We explain that enhanced damages may reduce the problem, but …

Recommendations And Comments On The Draft Vertical Merger Guidelines, Jonathan B. Baker, Nancy L. Rose, Steven C. Salop, Fiona Scott Morton

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

These recommendations and comments respond to the request by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division for public comment on the draft 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. We commend the agencies for updating the 1984 non-horizontal merger guidelines by recognizing the substantial advances in economic thinking about vertical mergers in the thirty-five years since those guidelines were issued. Our comments emphasize four issues: (i) the treatment of the elimination of double marginalization (“EDM”), particularly that the draft vertical merger guidelines appear inappropriately to make proof of cognizability part of the agencies burden and that they appear to …

Probability, Presumptions And Evidentiary Burdens In Antitrust Analysis: Revitalizing The Rule Of Reason For Exclusionary Conduct, Andrew I. Gavil, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The conservative critique of antitrust law has been highly influential and has facilitated a transformation of antitrust standards of conduct since the 1970s and led to increasingly more permissive standards of conduct. While these changes have taken many forms, all were influenced by the view that competition law was over-deterrent. Critics relied heavily on the assumption that the durability and costs of false positive errors far exceeded those of false negatives.

Many of the assumptions that guided this retrenchment of antitrust rules were mistaken and advances in the law and in economic analysis have rendered them anachronistic, particularly with respect …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Law And Economics Scholars In Support Of Appellee And Affirmance, Mark A. Lemley, A. Douglas Melamed, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In reliance on Qualcomm’s FRAND promises, key SSOs incorporated its technologies into wireless standards. Qualcomm takes the position that its patented technologies are essential to those standards and, therefore, that any firm making or selling a standard-compliant product infringes its patents. As a result, the SSOs’ incorporation of Qualcomm’s patented technologies into wireless standards created a huge market for licenses to Qualcomm’s SEPs.

The district court held that Qualcomm used its chipset monopolies, not only to extract the high chip-set prices to which it was entitled, but also to perpetuate those monopolies by disadvantaging rival chip-makers and raising entry barriers. …

Five Principles For Vertical Merger Enforcement Policy, Jonathan B. Baker, Nancy L. Rose, Steven C. Salop, Fiona Scott Morton

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There seems to be consensus that the Department of Justice’s 1984 Vertical Merger Guidelines do not reflect either modern theoretical and empirical economic analysis or current agency enforcement policy. Yet widely divergent views of preferred enforcement policies have been expressed among agency enforcers and commentators. Based on our review of the relevant economic literature and our experience analyzing vertical mergers, we recommend that the enforcement agencies adopt five principles: (i) The agencies should consider and investigate the full range of potential anticompetitive harms when evaluating vertical mergers; (ii) The agencies should decline to presume that vertical mergers benefit competition on …

Analyzing Vertical Mergers To Avoid False Negatives: Three Recent Case Studies, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article analyzes three recent vertical mergers: a private antitrust case attacking the consummated merger of Jeld-Wen and Craftmaster Manufacturing Inc. (“CMI”) that was cleared by the DOJ in 2012 but subsequently litigated and won by the plaintiff, Steves & Sons in 2018; and two recent vertical merger matters investigated and cleared (with limited remedies) by 3-2 votes by the Federal Trade Commission in early 2019 -- Staples/Essendant and Fresenius/NxStage. There are some factual parallels among these three matters that make it interesting to analyze them together. First, the DOJ’s decision to clear Jeld-Wen/CMI merger appears to be a clear …

Revising The Vertical Merger Guidelines (Ftc Hearings), Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This slide deck was the author’s presentation at the FTC Hearings on Vertical Mergers (November 1, 2018). The deck sets out a summary of the author’s economic analysis and proposed revisions to the U.S. Vertical Merger Guidelines.

The At&T/Time Warner Merger: How Judge Leon Garbled Professor Nash, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The US District Court in the AT&T/Time Warner vertical merger case has issued its opinion permitting the merger. At of this writing in August 2018, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has appealed to the DC Circuit and filed its brief, as have several Amici. I was disappointed that the DOJ was unable to prove its case to the satisfaction of Judge Leon, the trial judge. Notwithstanding the court’s confidence that the merger is procompetitive, I remain concerned that it will have anti- competitive effects, both on its own and following the subsequent vertical mergers in the TV industry, which this …

Vertical Mergers And The Mfn Thicket In Television, Erik Hovenkamp, Neel U. Sukhatme

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Increasingly, cable and satellite TV services (known as “MVPDs”) seek to acquire upstream programming creators, as illustrated by AT&T’s recent merger with Time-Warner. At the same time, the pay-TV industry is rife with “most-favored nation” (MFN) agreements, which can sharply constrict the competitive process. The most problematic variety, so-called “unconditional” MFNs, raise serious antitrust concerns, as they may forestall effective entry by new streaming-based platforms; penalize pro-competitive deviations from the status quo; and facilitate de facto coordination among integrated MVPDs.

While vertical mergers in the industry have received significant antitrust attention, the MFN concerns are interrelated. Problematic MFNs may naturally …

Market Definition, Steven C. Salop, Serge Moresi, John R. Woodbury

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We explain the “hypothetical monopolist test” that has become the standard methodology for identifying relevant antitrust markets in merger cases, and discuss two approaches to implementing the test. We then focus on the implementation of the test when firms offer multiple products or services, either inside or outside the candidate market, and discuss the “hypothetical cartel test” introduced in the 2010 U.S. Merger Guidelines.

The Raising Rivals' Cost Foreclosure Paradigm, Conditional Pricing Practices, And The Flawed Incremental Price-Cost Test, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There are two overarching legal paradigms for analyzing exclusionary conduct in antitrust – predatory pricing and the raising rivals’ costs characterization of foreclosure. Sometimes the choice of paradigm is obvious. Other times, it may depend on the structure of the plaintiff’s allegations. Some types of conduct, notably conditional pricing practices (CPPs), might appear by analogy to fit into both paradigms. CPPs involve pricing that is conditioned on exclusivity or some other type of favoritism in a customer’s purchases or input supplier’s sales. The predatory pricing paradigm would attack the low prices of CPPs. By contrast, the RRC foreclosure paradigm would …

Modifying Merger Consent Decrees To Improve Merger Enforcement Policy, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article analyzes my short proposal for reviewing and modifying merger consent decrees to permit additional relief if the provisions of the initial consent merger are found to fail to preserve or restore competition in a reasonable period of time after the merger was consummated. My proposal also would involve more frequent reviews of consummated mergers that have been cleared without challenge, particularly those that were close calls. While “Don't Look Back” might be the best anthem for artists, economic decision theory would not support that approach to merger policy.

Predicting the impact of proposed mergers and remedies on consumers …

Evaluating Joint Ventures: Economic Analysis Checklist, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This short article (for a symposium on joint ventures) provides practitioners and law professor with a 20 question checklist to guide the competitive effects analysis of the formation of a joint venture and the specific restraints and conduct of the venture. The questions mainly focus on ventures among actual or potential competitors, though some of the questions also are relevant for ventures involving complementary product firms. The questions concern potential competitive harms, potential competitive benefits, and the determination of net competitive effects. While this sequencing follows the standard burden-shifting formulation of the rule of reason decision process, the article notes …

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). …