This article is a part of the Merger Guidelines Symposium symposium.
I think this symposium is a terrific idea and thank Josh Wright for organizing it. As Chairman Leibowitz and AAG Varney said, we want to have as open a process as possible as we explore whether to update the HMG and, if so, how. There can hardly be a more open place for a symposium than on the blogosphere. I anticipate that there will be a wide array of responses and comments posted here, and we will be reading with great interest.
There have been 17 years of learning in both the legal and economic realms since the last major Guidelines revision. Are there advances in research or evolutions in best practice that should be included in the Guidelines in order to make them more useful to the business and antitrust community?
Although we issued 20 questions, with subparts to many of them, I like how this symposium will get right down to the heart of the matter by focusing on two critical questions to start the ball rolling: “should the HMG be revised?”, and “if yes, what is the most important revision that you would recommend and why?”
And, as a reminder to all. The FTC and DOJ are soliciting comments, which are due by November 9, and holding public workshops. We hope that those participating in this event will also contribute in a more formal way to the agencies’ process through filing public comments at https://public.commentworks.com/ftc/hmgworkshop1/ and through participating in our workshops either here in Washington (December 3 and January 26) or at NYU (December 8), Northwestern University (December 10), or Stanford (January 14).
