Archives For dynamic competition

What the European Commission’s More Interventionist Approach to Exclusionary Abuses Could Mean for EU Courts and for U.S. States

Alden Abbott —  5 April 2023

The European Commission on March 27 showered the public with a series of documents heralding a new, more interventionist approach to enforce Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which prohibits “abuses of dominance.” This new approach threatens more aggressive, less economically sound enforcement of single-firm conduct in Europe.

EU courts may eventually constrain the Commission’s overreach in this area somewhat, but harmful business uncertainty will be the near-term reality. What’s more, the Commission’s new approach may unfortunately influence U.S. states that are considering European-style abuse-of-dominance amendments to their own substantive antitrust laws. As such, market-oriented U.S. antitrust commentators will need to be even more vigilant in keeping tabs of—and, where necessary, promptly critiquing—economically problematic shifts in European antitrust-enforcement policy.

The Commission’s Emerging Reassessment of Abuses of Dominance

In a press release summarizing its new initiative, the Commission made a “call for evidence” to obtain feedback on the adoption of first-time guidelines on exclusionary abuses of dominance under Article 102 TFEU.

In parallel, the Commission also published a “communication” announcing amendments to its 2008 guidance on enforcement priorities in challenging abusive exclusionary conduct. According to the press release, until final Article 102 guidelines are approved, this guidance “provides certain clarifications on its approach to determine whether to pursue cases of exclusionary conduct as a matter of priority.” An annex to the communication sets forth specific amendments to the 2008 guidance.

Finally, the Commission also released a competition policy brief (“a dynamic and workable effects-based approach to the abuse of dominance”) that discusses the policy justifications for the changes enumerated in the annex.

In short, the annex “toughens” the approach to abuse of dominance enforcement in five ways:

  1. It takes a broader view of what constitutes “anticompetitive foreclosure.” The Annex rejects the 2008 guidance’s emphasis on profitability (cases where a dominant firm can profitably maintain supracompetitive prices or profitably influence other parameters of competition) as key to prioritizing matters for enforcement. Instead, a new, far less-demanding prosecutorial standard is announced, one that views anticompetitive foreclosure as a situation “that allow[s] the dominant undertaking to negatively influence, to its own advantage and to the detriment of consumers, the various parameters of competition, such as price, production, innovation, variety or quality of goods or services.” Under this new approach, highly profitable competition on the merits (perhaps reflecting significant cost efficiencies) might be challenged, say, merely because enforcers were dissatisfied with a dominant firm’s particular pricing decisions, or the quality, variety, and “innovativeness” of its output. This would be a recipe for bureaucratic micromanagement of dominant firms’ business plans by competition-agency officials. The possibilities for arbitrary decision making by those officials, who may be sensitive to the interests of politically connected rent seekers (say, less-efficient competitors) are obvious.
  2. The annex diminishes the importance of economic efficiency in dominant-firm analysis. The Commission’s 2008 guidance specified that Commission enforcers “would generally intervene where the conduct concerned has already been or is capable of hampering competition from competitors that are considered to be as efficient as the dominant undertaking.” The revised 2023 guidance “recognizes that in certain circumstances a less efficient competitor should be taken into account when considering whether particular price-based conduct leads to anticompetitive foreclosure.” This amendment plainly invites selective-enforcement actions to assist less-efficient competitors, placing protection of those firms above consumer-welfare maximization. In order to avoid liability, dominant firms may choose to raise their prices or reduce their investments in cost-reducing innovations, so as to protect a relatively inefficient competitive fringe. The end result would be diminished consumer welfare.
  3. The annex encourages further micromanagement of dominant-firm pricing and other business decisions. Revised 2023 guidance invites the Commission to “examine economic data relating to prices” and to possible below-cost pricing, in considering whether a hypothetical as-efficient competitor would be foreclosed. Relatedly, the Commission encourages “taking into account other relevant quantitative and/or qualitative evidence” in determining whether an as-efficient competitor can compete “effectively” (emphasis added). This focus on often-subjective criteria such as “qualitative” indicia and the “effectiveness” of competition could subject dominant firms to costly new business-planning uncertainty. Similarly, the invitation to enforcers to “examine” prices may be viewed as a warning against “overaggressive” price discounting that would be expected to benefit consumers.
  4. The annex imposes new constraints on a firm’s decision as to whether or not to deal (beneficial voluntary exchange, an essential business freedom that underlies our free-market system – see here, for example). A revision to the 2008 guidance specifies that, “[i]n situations of constructive refusal to supply (subjecting access to ‘unfair conditions’), it is not appropriate to pursue as a matter of priority only cases concerning the provision of an indispensable input or the access to an essential facility.” This encourages complaints to Brussels enforcers by scores of companies that are denied an opportunity to deal with a dominant firm, due to “unfairness.” This may be expected to substantially undermine business efficiency, as firms stuck with the “dominant” label are required to enter into suboptimal supply relationships. Dynamic efficiency will also suffer, to the extent that intellectual-property holders are required to license on unfavorable terms (a reality that may be expected to diminish dominant firms’ incentives to invest in innovative activities).
  5. The annex threatens to increase the number of Commission “margin-squeeze” cases, whereby vertically integrated firms are required to offer favorable sales terms to, and thereby prop up, wholesalers who want to “compete” with them at retail. (See here for a more detailed discussion of the margin-squeeze concept.) The current standard for margin-squeeze liability already is far narrower in the United States than in Europe, due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in linkLine (2009).

Specifically, the annex announces margin-squeeze-related amendments to the 2008 guidance. The amendments aim to clarify that “it is not appropriate to pursue as a matter of priority margin squeeze cases only where those cases involve a product or service that is objectively necessary to be able to compete effectively on the downstream market.” This extends margin-squeeze downstream competitor-support obligations far beyond regulated industries; how far, only time will tell. (See here for an economic study indicating that even the Commission’s current less-intrusive margin-squeeze policy undermines consumer welfare.) The propping up of less-efficient competitors may, of course, be facilitated by having the dominant firm take the lead in raising retail prices, to ensure that the propped-up companies get “fair margins.” Such a result diminishes competitive vigor and (once again) directly harms consumers.

In sum, through the annex’s revisions to the 2008 guidance, the Commission has, without public comment (and well prior to the release of new first-time guidelines), taken several significant steps that predictably will reduce competitive vitality and harm consumers in those markets where “dominant firms” exist. Relatedly, of course, to the extent that innovative firms respond to incentives to “pull their punches” so as not to become dominant, dynamic competition will be curtailed. As such, consumers will suffer, and economic welfare will diminish.

How Will European Courts Respond?

Fortunately, there is a ray of hope for those concerned about the European Commission’s new interventionist philosophy regarding abuses of dominance. Although the annex and the related competition policy brief cite a host of EU judicial decisions in support of revisions to the guidance, their selective case references and interpretations of judicial holdings may be subject to question. I leave it to EU law experts (I am not one) to more thoroughly parse specific judicial opinions cited in the March 27 release. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the Commission may face some obstacles to dramatically “stepping up” its abuse-of-dominance enforcement actions along the lines suggested by the annex. 

A number of relatively recent judicial decisions underscore the concerns that EU courts have demonstrated regarding the need for evidentiary backing and economic analysis to support the Commission’s findings of anticompetitive foreclosure. Let’s look at a few.

  • In Intel v. Commission (2017), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) held that the Commission had failed to adequately assess whether Intel’s conditional rebates on certain microprocessors were capable of restricting competition on the basis of the “as-efficient competitor” (AEC) test, and referred the case back to the General Court. The ECJ also held that the balancing of the favorable and unfavorable effects of Intel’s rebate practice could only be carried out after an analysis of that practice’s ability to exclude at least as-efficient-competitors.
  • In 2022, on remand, the General Court annulled the Commission’s determination (thereby erasing its 1.06 billion Euro fine) that Intel had abused its dominant position. The Court held that the Commission’s failure to respond to Intel’s argument that the AEC test was flawed, coupled with the Commission’s errors in its analysis of contested Intel practices, meant that the “analysis carried out by the Commission is incomplete and, in any event, does not make it possible to establish to the requisite legal standard that the rebates at issue were capable of having, or were likely to have, anticompetitive effects.”
  • In Unilever Italia (2023), the ECJ responded to an Italian Council of State request for guidance in light of the Italian Competition Authority’s finding that Unilever had abused its dominant position through exclusivity clauses that covered the distribution of packaged ice cream in Italy. The court found that a competition authority is obliged to assess the actual capacity to exclude by taking into account evidence submitted by the dominant undertaking (in this case, the Italian Authority had failed to do so). The ECJ stated that its 2017 clarification of rebate-scheme analysis in Intel also was applicable to exclusivity clauses.
  • Finally, in Qualcomm v. Commission (2022), the General Court set aside a 2018 Commission decision imposing a 1 billion Euro fine on Qualcomm for abuse of a dominant position in LTE chipsets. The Commission contended that Qualcomm’s 2011-2016 incentive payments to Apple for exclusivity reduced Apple’s incentive to shift suppliers and had the capability to foreclose Qualcomm’s competitors from the LTE-chipset market. The court found massive procedural irregularities by the Commission and held that the Commission had not shown that Qualcomm’s payments either had foreclosed or were capable of foreclosing competitors. The Court concluded that the Commission had seriously erred in the evidence it relied upon, and in its failure to take into account all relevant factors, as required under the 2022 Intel decision. 

These decisions are not, of course, directly related to the specific changes announced in the annex. They do, however, raise serious questions about how EU judges will view new aggressive exclusionary-conduct theories based on amendments to the 2008 guidance. In particular, EU courts have signaled that they will:

  1. closely scrutinize Commission fact-finding and economic analysis in evaluating exclusionary-abuse cases;
  2. require enforcers to carefully weigh factual and economic submissions put forth by dominant firms under investigation;
  3. require that enforcers take economic-efficiency arguments seriously; and
  4. continue to view the “as-efficient competitor” concept as important, even though the Commission may seek to minimize the test’s significance.

In other words, in the EU, as in the United States, reviewing courts may “put a crimp” in efforts by national competition agencies to read case law very broadly, so as to “rein in” allegedly abusive dominant-firm conduct. In jurisdictions with strong rule-of-law traditions, enforcers propose but judges dispose. The kicker, however, is that judicial review takes time. In the near term, firms will have to absorb additional business-uncertainty costs.

What About the States?

“Monopolization”—rather than the European “abuse of a dominant position”—is, of course, the key single-firm conduct standard under U.S. federal antitrust law. But the debate over the Commission’s abuse-of-dominance standards nonetheless is significant to domestic American antitrust enforcement.

Under U.S. antitrust federalism, the individual states are empowered to enact antitrust legislation that goes beyond the strictures of federal antitrust law. Currently, several major states—New York, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota—are considering antitrust bills that would add abuse of a dominant position as a new state antitrust cause of action (see here, here, here, and here). What’s more, the most populous U.S. state, California, may also consider similar legislation (see here). Such new laws would harmfully undermine consumer welfare (see my commentary here).

If certain states enacted a new abuse-of-dominance standard, it would be natural for their enforcers to look to EU enforcers (with their decades of relevant experience) for guidance in the area. As such, the annex (and future Commission guidelines, which one would expect to be consistent with the new annex guidance) could prove quite influential in promoting highly interventionist state policies that reach far beyond federal monopolization standards.

What’s worse, federal judicial case law that limits the scope of Sherman Act monopolization cases would have little or no influence in constraining state judges’ application of any new abuse-of-dominance standards. It is questionable that state judges would feel themselves empowered or even capable of independently applying often-confusing EU case law regarding abuse of dominance as a possible constraint on state officials’ prosecutions.

Conclusion

The Commission’s emerging guidance on abuse of dominance is bad for consumers and for competition. EU courts may constrain some Commission enforcement excesses, but that will take time, and new short-term business uncertainty costs are likely.

Moreover, negative effects may eventually also be felt in the United States if states enact proposed abuse-of-dominance prohibitions and state enforcers adopt the European Commission’s interventionist philosophy. State courts, applying an entirely new standard not found in federal law, should not be expected to play a significant role in curtailing aggressive state prosecutions for abuse of dominance.  

Promoters of principled, effects-based, economics-centric antitrust enforcement should take heed. They must be prepared to highlight the ramifications of both foreign and state-level initiatives as they continue to advocate for market-based antitrust policies. Sound law & economics training for state enforcers and judges likely will become more important than ever.  

In Antitrust & Competition, European Union, Exclusionary Conduct, Monopolization, Supreme Court, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , ,
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The Market Challenge to Populist Antitrust

Jonathan M. Barnett —  16 May 2022

The wave of populist antitrust that has been embraced by regulators and legislators in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and other jurisdictions rests on the assumption that currently dominant platforms occupy entrenched positions that only government intervention can dislodge. Following this view, Facebook will forever dominate social networking, Amazon will forever dominate cloud computing, Uber and Lyft will forever dominate ridesharing, and Amazon and Netflix will forever dominate streaming. This assumption of platform invincibility is so well-established that some policymakers advocate significant interventions without making any meaningful inquiry into whether a seemingly dominant platform actually exercises market power.

Yet this assumption is not supported by historical patterns in platform markets. It is true that network effects drive platform markets toward “winner-take-most” outcomes. But the winner is often toppled quickly and without much warning. There is no shortage of examples.

In 2007, a columnist in The Guardian observed that “it may already be too late for competitors to dislodge MySpace” and quoted an economist as authority for the proposition that “MySpace is well on the way to becoming … a natural monopoly.” About one year later, Facebook had overtaken MySpace “monopoly” in the social-networking market. Similarly, it was once thought that Blackberry would forever dominate the mobile-communications device market, eBay would always dominate the online e-commerce market, and AOL would always dominate the internet-service-portal market (a market that no longer even exists). The list of digital dinosaurs could go on.

All those tech leaders were challenged by entrants and descended into irrelevance (or reduced relevance, in eBay’s case). This occurred through the force of competition, not government intervention.

Why This Time is Probably Not Different

Given this long line of market precedents, current legislative and regulatory efforts to “restore” competition through extensive intervention in digital-platform markets require that we assume that “this time is different.” Just as that slogan has been repeatedly rebutted in the financial markets, so too is it likely to be rebutted in platform markets. 

There is already supporting evidence. 

In the cloud market, Amazon’s AWS now faces vigorous competition from Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. In the streaming market, Amazon and Netflix face stiff competition from Disney+ and Apple TV+, just to name a few well-resourced rivals. In the social-networking market, Facebook now competes head-to-head with TikTok and seems to be losing. The market power once commonly attributed to leading food-delivery platforms such as Grubhub, UberEats, and DoorDash is implausible after persistent losses in most cases, and the continuous entry of new services into a rich variety of local and product-market niches.

Those who have advocated antitrust intervention on a fast-track schedule may remain unconvinced by these inconvenient facts. But the market is not. 

Investors have already recognized Netflix’s vulnerability to competition, as reflected by a 35% fall in its stock price on April 20 and a decline of more than 60% over the past 12 months. Meta, Facebook’s parent, also experienced a reappraisal, falling more than 26% on Feb. 3 and more than 35% in the past 12 months. Uber, the pioneer of the ridesharing market, has declined by almost 50% over the past 12 months, while Lyft, its principal rival, has lost more than 60% of its value. These price freefalls suggest that antitrust populists may be pursuing solutions to a problem that market forces are already starting to address.

The Forgotten Curse of the Incumbent

For some commentators, the sharp downturn in the fortunes of the so-called “Big Tech” firms would not come as a surprise.

It has long been observed by some scholars and courts that a dominant firm “carries the seeds of its own destruction”—a phrase used by then-professor and later-Judge Richard Posner, writing in the University of Chicago Law Review in 1971. The reason: a dominant firm is liable to exhibit high prices, mediocre quality, or lackluster innovation, which then invites entry by more adept challengers. However, this view has been dismissed as outdated in digital-platform markets, where incumbents are purportedly protected by network effects and switching costs that make it difficult for entrants to attract users. Depending on the set of assumptions selected by an economic modeler, each contingency is equally plausible in theory.

The plunging values of leading platforms supplies real-world evidence that favors the self-correction hypothesis. It is often overlooked that network effects can work in both directions, resulting in a precipitous fall from market leader to laggard. Once users start abandoning a dominant platform for a new competitor, network effects operating in reverse can cause a “run for the exits” that leaves the leader with little time to recover. Just ask Nokia, the world’s leading (and seemingly unbeatable) smartphone brand until the Apple iPhone came along.

Why Market Self-Correction Outperforms Regulatory Correction

Market self-correction inherently outperforms regulatory correction: it operates far more rapidly and relies on consumer preferences to reallocate market leadership—a result perfectly consistent with antitrust’s mission to preserve “competition on the merits.” In contrast, policymakers can misdiagnose the competitive effects of business practices; are susceptible to the influence of private interests (especially those that are unable to compete on the merits); and often mispredict the market’s future trajectory. For Exhibit A, see the protracted antitrust litigation by the U.S. Department against IBM, which started in 1975 and ended in withdrawal of the suit in 1982. Given the launch of the Apple II in 1977, the IBM PC in 1981, and the entry of multiple “PC clones,” the forces of creative destruction swiftly displaced IBM from market leadership in the computing industry.

Regulators and legislators around the world have emphasized the urgency of taking dramatic action to correct claimed market failures in digital environments, casting aside prudential concerns over the consequences if any such failure proves to be illusory or temporary. 

But the costs of regulatory failure can be significant and long-lasting. Markets must operate under unnecessary compliance burdens that are difficult to modify. Regulators’ enforcement resources are diverted, and businesses are barred from adopting practices that would benefit consumers. In particular, proposed breakup remedies advocated by some policymakers would undermine the scale economies that have enabled platforms to push down prices, an important consideration in a time of accelerating inflation.

Conclusion

The high concentration levels and certain business practices in digital-platform markets certainly raise important concerns as a matter of antitrust (as well as privacy, intellectual property, and other bodies of) law. These concerns merit scrutiny and may necessitate appropriately targeted interventions. Yet, any policy steps should be anchored in the factually grounded analysis that has characterized decades of regulatory and judicial action to implement the antitrust laws with appropriate care. Abandoning this nuanced framework for a blunt approach based on reflexive assumptions of market power is likely to undermine, rather than promote, the public interest in competitive markets.

In Amazon, Antitrust & Competition, European Union, Facebook, International, Platforms, Truth on the Market, Uber, United Kingdom , , , , , , , ,
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Build Broadband Better: Focus on Competition, Not Competitors

Geoffrey Manne & Ben Sperry —  28 June 2021

President Joe Biden named his post-COVID-19 agenda “Build Back Better,” but his proposals to prioritize support for government-run broadband service “with less pressure to turn profits” and to “reduce Internet prices for all Americans” will slow broadband deployment and leave taxpayers with an enormous bill.

Policymakers should pay particular heed to this danger, amid news that the Senate is moving forward with considering a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, and that the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service will coordinate on spending broadband subsidy dollars.

In order to ensure that broadband subsidies lead to greater buildout and adoption, policymakers must correctly understand the state of competition in broadband and not assume that increasing the number of firms in a market will necessarily lead to better outcomes for consumers or the public.

A recent white paper published by us here at the International Center for Law & Economics makes the case that concentration is a poor predictor of competitiveness, while offering alternative policies for reaching Americans who don’t have access to high-speed Internet service.

The data show that the state of competition in broadband is generally healthy. ISPs routinely invest billions of dollars per year in building, maintaining, and upgrading their networks to be faster, more reliable, and more available to consumers. FCC data show that average speeds available to consumers, as well as the number of competitors providing higher-speed tiers, have increased each year. And prices for broadband, as measured by price-per-Mbps, have fallen precipitously, dropping 98% over the last 20 years. None of this makes sense if the facile narrative about the absence of competition were true.

In our paper, we argue that the real public policy issue for broadband isn’t curbing the pursuit of profits or adopting price controls, but making sure Americans have broadband access and encouraging adoption. In areas where it is very costly to build out broadband networks, like rural areas, there tend to be fewer firms in the market. But having only one or two ISPs available is far less of a problem than having none at all. Understanding the underlying market conditions and how subsidies can both help and hurt the availability and adoption of broadband is an important prerequisite to good policy.

The basic problem is that those who have decried the lack of competition in broadband often look at the number of ISPs in a given market to determine whether a market is competitive. But this is not how economists think of competition. Instead, economists look at competition as a dynamic process where changes in supply and demand factors are constantly pushing the market toward new equilibria.

In general, where a market is “contestable”—that is, where existing firms face potential competition from the threat of new entry—even just a single existing firm may have to act as if it faces vigorous competition. Such markets often have characteristics (e.g., price, quality, and level of innovation) similar or even identical to those with multiple existing competitors. This dynamic competition, driven by changes in technology or consumer preferences, ensures that such markets are regularly disrupted by innovative products and services—a process that does not always favor incumbents.

Proposals focused on increasing the number of firms providing broadband can actually reduce consumer welfare. Whether through overbuilding—by allowing new private entrants to free-ride on the initial investment by incumbent companies—or by going into the Internet business itself through municipal broadband, government subsidies can increase the number of firms providing broadband. But it can’t do so without costs―which include not just the cost of the subsidies themselves, which ultimately come from taxpayers, but also the reduced incentives for unsubsidized private firms to build out broadband in the first place.

If underlying supply and demand conditions in rural areas lead to a situation where only one provider can profitably exist, artificially adding another completely reliant on subsidies will likely just lead to the exit of the unsubsidized provider. Or, where a community already has municipal broadband, it is unlikely that a private ISP will want to enter and compete with a firm that doesn’t have to turn a profit.

A much better alternative for policymakers is to increase the demand for buildout through targeted user subsidies, while reducing regulatory barriers to entry that limit supply.

For instance, policymakers should consider offering connectivity vouchers to unserved households in order to stimulate broadband deployment and consumption. Current subsidy programs rely largely on subsidizing the supply side, but this requires the government to determine the who and where of entry. Connectivity vouchers would put the choice in the hands of consumers, while encouraging more buildout to areas that may currently be uneconomic to reach due to low population density or insufficient demand due to low adoption rates.

Local governments could also facilitate broadband buildout by reducing unnecessary regulatory barriers. Local building codes could adopt more connection-friendly standards. Local governments could also reduce the cost of access to existing poles and other infrastructure. Eligible Telecommunications Carrier (ETC) requirements could also be eliminated, because they deter potential providers from seeking funds for buildout (and don’t offer countervailing benefits).

Albert Einstein once said: “if I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem, and one minute resolving it.” When it comes to encouraging broadband buildout, policymakers should make sure they are solving the right problem. The problem is that the cost of building out broadband to unserved areas is too high or the demand too low—not that there are too few competitors.

In Administrative Law, Antitrust & Competition, Barriers to Entry, Broadband, COVID-19, Federal Communications Commission, International Center for Law & Economics, Regulation, Regulatory Reform, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Dynamic Merger Efficiencies: The Case of Pharmaceutical Markets

Alden Abbott —  25 June 2021

The recent launch of the international Multilateral Pharmaceutical Merger Task Force (MPMTF) is just the latest example of burgeoning cooperative efforts by leading competition agencies to promote convergence in antitrust enforcement. (See my recent paper on the globalization of antitrust, which assesses multinational cooperation and convergence initiatives in greater detail.) In what is a first, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the U.S. Justice Department’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division, offices of state Attorneys General, the European Commission’s Competition Directorate, Canada’s Competition Bureau, and the U.K.’s Competition and Market Authority (CMA) jointly created the MPMTF in March 2021 “to update their approach to analyzing the effects of pharmaceutical mergers.”

To help inform its analysis, in May 2021 the MPMTF requested public comments concerning the effects of pharmaceutical mergers. The MPMTF sought submissions regarding (among other issues) seven sets of questions:   

  1. What theories of harm should enforcement agencies consider when evaluating pharmaceutical mergers, including theories of harm beyond those currently considered?
  2. What is the full range of a pharmaceutical merger’s effects on innovation? What challenges arise when mergers involve proprietary drug discovery and manufacturing platforms?
  3. In pharmaceutical merger review, how should we consider the risks or effects of conduct such as price-setting practices, reverse payments, and other ways in which pharmaceutical companies respond to or rely on regulatory processes?
  4. How should we approach market definition in pharmaceutical mergers, and how is that implicated by new or evolving theories of harm?
  5. What evidence may be relevant or necessary to assess and, if applicable, challenge a pharmaceutical merger based on any new or expanded theories of harm?
  6. What types of remedies would work in the cases to which those theories are applied?
  7. What factors, such as the scope of assets and characteristics of divestiture buyers, influence the likelihood and success of pharmaceutical divestitures to resolve competitive concerns?

My research assistant Andrew Mercado and I recently submitted comments for the record addressing the questions posed by the MPMTF. We concluded:

Federal merger enforcement in general and FTC pharmaceutical merger enforcement in particular have been effective in promoting competition and consumer welfare. Proposed statutory amendments to strengthen merger enforcement not only are unnecessary, but also would, if enacted, tend to undermine welfare and would thus be poor public policy. A brief analysis of seven questions propounded by the Multilateral Pharmaceutical Merger Task Force suggests that: (a) significant changes in enforcement policies are not warranted; and (b) investigators should employ sound law and economics analysis, taking full account of merger-related efficiencies, when evaluating pharmaceutical mergers. 

While we leave it to interested readers to review our specific comments, this commentary highlights one key issue which we stressed—the importance of giving due weight to efficiencies (and, in particular, dynamic efficiencies) in evaluating pharma mergers. We also note an important critique by FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson of the treatment accorded merger-related efficiencies by U.S. antitrust enforcers.   

Discussion

Innovation in pharmaceuticals and vaccines has immensely significant economic and social consequences, as demonstrated most recently in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, it is particularly important that public policy not stand in the way of realizing efficiencies that promote innovation in these markets. This observation applies directly, of course, to pharmaceutical antitrust enforcement, in general, and to pharma merger enforcement, in particular.

Regrettably, however, though general merger-enforcement policy has been generally sound, it has somewhat undervalued merger-related efficiencies.

Although U.S. antitrust enforcers give lip service to their serious consideration of efficiencies in merger reviews, the reality appears to be quite different, as documented by Commissioner Wilson in a 2020 speech.

Wilson’s General Merger-Efficiencies Critique: According to Wilson, the combination of finding narrow markets and refusing to weigh out-of-market efficiencies has created major “legal and evidentiary hurdles a defendant must clear when seeking to prove offsetting procompetitive efficiencies.” What’s more, the “courts [have] largely continue[d] to follow the Agencies’ lead in minimizing the importance of efficiencies.” Wilson shows that “the Horizontal Merger Guidelines text and case law appear to set different standards for demonstrating harms and efficiencies,” and argues that this “asymmetric approach has the obvious potential consequence of preventing some procompetitive mergers that increase consumer welfare.” Wilson concludes on a more positive note that this problem can be addressed by having enforcers: (1) treat harms and efficiencies symmetrically; and (2) establish clear and reasonable expectations for what types of efficiency analysis will and will not pass muster.

While our filing with the MPMTF did not discuss Wilson’s general treatment of merger efficiencies, one would hope that the task force will appropriately weigh it in its deliberations. Our filing instead briefly addressed two “informational efficiencies” that may arise in the context of pharmaceutical mergers. These include:

More Efficient Resource Reallocation: The theory of the firm teaches that mergers may be motivated by the underutilization or misallocation of assets, or the opportunity to create welfare-enhancing synergies. In the pharmaceutical industry, these synergies may come from joining complementary research and development programs, combining diverse and specialized expertise that may be leveraged for better, faster drug development and more innovation.

Enhanced R&D: Currently, much of the R&D for large pharmaceutical companies is achieved through partnerships or investment in small biotechnology and research firms specializing in a single type of therapy. Whereas large pharmaceutical companies have expertise in marketing, navigating regulation, and undertaking trials of new drugs, small, research-focused firms can achieve greater advancements in medicine with smaller budgets. Furthermore, changes within firms brought about by a merger may increase innovation.

With increases in intellectual property and proprietary data that come from the merging of two companies, smaller research firms that work with the merged entity may have access to greater pools of information, enhancing the potential for innovation without increasing spending. This change not only raises the efficiency of the research being conducted in these small firms, but also increases the probability of a breakthrough without an increase in risk.

Conclusion

U.S. pharmaceutical merger enforcement has been fairly effective in forestalling anticompetitive combinations while allowing consumer welfare-enhancing transactions to go forward. Policy in this area should remain generally the same. Enforcers should continue to base enforcement decisions on sound economic theory fully supported by case-specific facts. Enforcement agencies could benefit, however, by placing a greater emphasis on efficiencies analysis. In particular, they should treat harms and efficiencies symmetrically (as recommend by Commissioner Wilson), and fully take into account likely resource reallocation and innovation-related efficiencies. 

In Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust Division, Corporate & Securities Law, COVID-19, Economic Theory, European Union, Federal Trade Commission, Health Care, Intellectual Property, International, Justice Department, Market Definition, Merger Guidelines, Mergers & Acquisitions, Pharmaceuticals, Platforms, Truth on the Market, United Kingdom , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Innovation-driven market structure in the ag-biotech industry [Ag-Biotech Symposium]

Geoffrey Manne —  31 March 2017

Geoffrey A. Manne is Executive Director of the International Center for Law & Economics

Dynamic versus static competition

Ever since David Teece and coauthors began writing about antitrust and innovation in high-tech industries in the 1980s, we’ve understood that traditional, price-based antitrust analysis is not intrinsically well-suited for assessing merger policy in these markets.

For high-tech industries, performance, not price, is paramount — which means that innovation is key:

Competition in some markets may take the form of Schumpeterian rivalry in which a succession of temporary monopolists displace one another through innovation. At any one time, there is little or no head-to-head price competition but there is significant ongoing innovation competition.

Innovative industries are often marked by frequent disruptions or “paradigm shifts” rather than horizontal market share contests, and investment in innovation is an important signal of competition. And competition comes from the continual threat of new entry down the road — often from competitors who, though they may start with relatively small market shares, or may arise in different markets entirely, can rapidly and unexpectedly overtake incumbents.

Which, of course, doesn’t mean that current competition and ease of entry are irrelevant. Rather, because, as Joanna Shepherd noted, innovation should be assessed across the entire industry and not solely within merging firms, conduct that might impede new, disruptive, innovative entry is indeed relevant.

But it is also important to remember that innovation comes from within incumbent firms, as well, and, often, that the overall level of innovation in an industry may be increased by the presence of large firms with economies of scope and scale.

In sum, and to paraphrase Olympia Dukakis’ character in Moonstruck: “what [we] don’t know about [the relationship between innovation and market structure] is a lot.”

What we do know, however, is that superficial, concentration-based approaches to antitrust analysis will likely overweight presumed foreclosure effects and underweight innovation effects.

We shouldn’t fetishize entry, or access, or head-to-head competition over innovation, especially where consumer welfare may be significantly improved by a reduction in the former in order to get more of the latter.

As Katz and Shelanski note:

To assess fully the impact of a merger on market performance, merger authorities and courts must examine how a proposed transaction changes market participants’ incentives and abilities to undertake investments in innovation.

At the same time, they point out that

Innovation can dramatically affect the relationship between the pre-merger marketplace and what is likely to happen if the proposed merger is consummated…. [This requires consideration of] how innovation will affect the evolution of market structure and competition. Innovation is a force that could make static measures of market structure unreliable or irrelevant, and the effects of innovation may be highly relevant to whether a merger should be challenged and to the kind of remedy antitrust authorities choose to adopt. (Emphasis added).

Dynamic competition in the ag-biotech industry

These dynamics seem to be playing out in the ag-biotech industry. (For a detailed look at how the specific characteristics of innovation in the ag-biotech industry have shaped industry structure, see, e.g., here (pdf)).  

One inconvenient truth for the “concentration reduces innovation” crowd is that, as the industry has experienced more consolidation, it has also become more, not less, productive and innovative. Between 1995 and 2015, for example, the market share of the largest seed producers and crop protection firms increased substantially. And yet, over the same period, annual industry R&D spending went up nearly 750 percent. Meanwhile, the resulting innovations have increased crop yields by 22%, reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, and increased farmer profits by 68%.

In her discussion of the importance of considering the “innovation ecosystem” in assessing the innovation effects of mergers in R&D-intensive industries, Joanna Shepherd noted that

In many consolidated firms, increases in efficiency and streamlining of operations free up money and resources to source external innovation. To improve their future revenue streams and market share, consolidated firms can be expected to use at least some of the extra resources to acquire external innovation. This increase in demand for externally-sourced innovation increases the prices paid for external assets, which, in turn, incentivizes more early-stage innovation in small firms and biotech companies. Aggregate innovation increases in the process!

The same dynamic seems to play out in the ag-biotech industry, as well:

The seed-biotechnology industry has been reliant on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as sources of new innovation. New SME startups (often spinoffs from university research) tend to specialize in commercial development of a new research tool, genetic trait, or both. Significant entry by SMEs into the seed-biotechnology sector began in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with a second wave of new entrants in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In recent years, exits have outnumbered entrants, and by 2008 just over 30 SMEs specializing in crop biotechnology were still active. The majority of the exits from the industry were the result of acquisition by larger firms. Of 27 crop biotechnology SMEs that were acquired between 1985 and 2009, 20 were acquired either directly by one of the Big 6 or by a company that itself was eventually acquired by a Big 6 company.

While there is more than one way to interpret these statistics (and they are often used by merger opponents, in fact, to lament increasing concentration), they are actually at least as consistent with an increase in innovation through collaboration (and acquisition) as with a decrease.

For what it’s worth, this is exactly how the startup community views the innovation ecosystem in the ag-biotech industry, as well. As the latest AgFunder AgTech Investing Report states:

The large agribusinesses understand that new innovation is key to their future, but the lack of M&A [by the largest agribusiness firms in 2016] highlighted their uncertainty about how to approach it. They will need to make more acquisitions to ensure entrepreneurs keep innovating and VCs keep investing.

It’s also true, as Diana Moss notes, that

Competition maximizes the potential for numerous collaborations. It also minimizes incentives to refuse to license, to impose discriminatory restrictions in technology licensing agreements, or to tacitly “agree” not to compete…. All of this points to the importance of maintaining multiple, parallel R&D pipelines, a notion that was central to the EU’s decision in Dow-DuPont.

And yet collaboration and licensing have long been prevalent in this industry. Examples are legion, but here are just a few significant ones:

  • Monsanto’s “global licensing agreement for the use of the CRISPR-Cas genome-editing technology in agriculture with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.”
  • Dow and Arcadia Biosciences’ “strategic collaboration to develop and commercialize new breakthrough yield traits and trait stacks in corn.”
  • Monsanto and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s “licensing agreement to develop crops tolerant to the broadleaf herbicide dicamba. This agreement is based on discoveries by UNL plant scientists.”

Both large and small firms in the ag-biotech industry continually enter into new agreements like these. See, e.g., here and here for a (surely incomplete) list of deals in 2016 alone.

At the same time, across the industry, new entry has been rampant despite increased M&A activity among the largest firms. Recent years have seen venture financing in AgTech skyrocket — from $400 million in 2010 to almost $5 billion in 2015 — and hundreds of startups now enter the industry annually.

The pending mergers

Today’s pending mergers are consistent with this characterization of a dynamic market in which structure is being driven by incentives to innovate, rather than monopolize. As Michael Sykuta points out,

The US agriculture sector has been experiencing consolidation at all levels for decades, even as the global ag economy has been growing and becoming more diverse. Much of this consolidation has been driven by technological changes that created economies of scale, both at the farm level and beyond.

These deals aren’t fundamentally about growing production capacity, expanding geographic reach, or otherwise enhancing market share; rather, each is a fundamental restructuring of the way the companies do business, reflecting today’s shifting agricultural markets, and the advanced technology needed to respond to them.

Technological innovation is unpredictable, often serendipitous, and frequently transformative of the ways firms organize and conduct their businesses. A company formed to grow and sell hybrid seeds in the 1920s, for example, would either have had to evolve or fold by the end of the century. Firms today will need to develop (or purchase) new capabilities and adapt to changing technology, scientific knowledge, consumer demand, and socio-political forces. The pending mergers seemingly fit exactly this mold.

As Allen Gibby notes, these mergers are essentially vertical combinations of disparate, specialized pieces of an integrated whole. Take the proposed Bayer/Monsanto merger, for example. Bayer is primarily a chemicals company, developing advanced chemicals to protect crops and enhance crop growth. Monsanto, on the other hand, primarily develops seeds and “seed traits” — advanced characteristics that ensure the heartiness of the seeds, give them resistance to herbicides and pesticides, and speed their fertilization and growth. In order to translate the individual advances of each into higher yields, it is important that these two functions work successfully together. Doing so enhances crop growth and protection far beyond what, say, spreading manure can accomplish — or either firm could accomplish working on its own.

The key is that integrated knowledge is essential to making this process function. Developing seed traits to work well with (i.e., to withstand) certain pesticides requires deep knowledge of the pesticide’s chemical characteristics, and vice-versa. Processing huge amounts of data to determine when to apply chemical treatments or to predict a disease requires not only that the right information is collected, at the right time, but also that it is analyzed in light of the unique characteristics of the seeds and chemicals. Increased communications and data-sharing between manufacturers increases the likelihood that farmers will use the best products available in the right quantity and at the right time in each field.

Vertical integration solves bargaining and long-term planning problems by unifying the interests (and the management) of these functions. Instead of arm’s length negotiation, a merged Bayer/Monsanto, for example, may better maximize R&D of complicated Ag/chem products through fully integrated departments and merged areas of expertise. A merged company can also coordinate investment decisions (instead of waiting up to 10 years to see what the other company produces), avoid duplication of research, adapt to changing conditions (and the unanticipated course of research), pool intellectual property, and bolster internal scientific capability more efficiently. All told, the merged company projects spending about $16 billion on R&D over the next six years. Such coordinated investment will likely garner far more than either company could from separately spending even the same amount to develop new products. 

Controlling an entire R&D process and pipeline of traits for resistance, chemical treatments, seeds, and digital complements would enable the merged firm to better ensure that each of these products works together to maximize crop yields, at the lowest cost, and at greater speed. Consider the advantages that Apple’s tightly-knit ecosystem of software and hardware provides to computer and device users. Such tight integration isn’t the only way to compete (think Android), but it has frequently proven to be a successful model, facilitating some functions (e.g., handoff between Macs and iPhones) that are difficult if not impossible in less-integrated systems. And, it bears noting, important elements of Apple’s innovation have come through acquisition….

Conclusion

As LaFontaine and Slade have made clear, theoretical concerns about the anticompetitive consequences of vertical integrations are belied by the virtual absence of empirical support:

Under most circumstances, profit–maximizing vertical–integration and merger decisions are efficient, not just from the firms’ but also from the consumers’ points of view.

Other antitrust scholars are skeptical of vertical-integration fears because firms normally have strong incentives to deal with providers of complementary products. Bayer and Monsanto, for example, might benefit enormously from integration, but if competing seed producers seek out Bayer’s chemicals to develop competing products, there’s little reason for the merged firm to withhold them: Even if the new seeds out-compete Monsanto’s, Bayer/Monsanto can still profit from providing the crucial input. Its incentive doesn’t necessarily change if the merger goes through, and whatever “power” Bayer has as an input is a function of its scientific know-how, not its merger with Monsanto.

In other words, while some competitors could find a less hospitable business environment, consumers will likely suffer no apparent ill effects, and continue to receive the benefits of enhanced product development and increased productivity.

That’s what we’d expect from innovation-driven integration, and antitrust enforcers should be extremely careful before thwarting or circumscribing these mergers lest they end up thwarting, rather than promoting, consumer welfare.

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