http://truthonthemarket.com/2008/08/02/the-price-of-merger-approval-and-triple-federal-enforcement/ Academic commentary on law, business, economics and more Sat, 02 Jun 2012 12:17:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://truthonthemarket.com/2008/08/02/the-price-of-merger-approval-and-triple-federal-enforcement/#comment-7331 Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:09:55 +0000 http://www.truthonthemarket.com/2008/08/02/the-price-of-merger-approval-and-triple-federal-enforcement/#comment-7331 Why limit yourself to the FCC- why not FERC as well? If the purpose of merger control is to police against unlawful anti-competitive conduct, I do not see why anyone other than an antitrust authority should have the authority to review megers since sector regulators lack the expertise of the antitrust agencies in this area. If the “public interest” is broader (and the cynics would argue that by public interest we really mean public choice) then there is a role of sector regulators to approve of mergers. It strikes me that currently we have the worst of both worlds. If efficiency is the current goal of antitrust, then we do not want sector regulators to be able to stick their finger in the merger pie since their additional concessions do not comport with what the experts in the antitrust agencies want. If you believe that there should be a more populist vision of antitrust, then you should be troubled too since there might be times when antitrust would be more populist and sector regulation less so and who will still end up with a regulatory/antitrust mismatch. This is all the more reason to play antitrust battles of how to approach merger analysis only in antitrust and not in sector regulation.

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