Vertical Mergers
The Prescription for Better Health Insurance? Competition.
Anticompetitive behavior, such as consolidation, in the health-insurance industry has allowed a small group of insurers to dominate the market. One of the main drivers of this behavior is “adverse selection,” where individuals know more about how sick they are than insurance companies do. To mitigate the risk of paying out more claims than they can cover, insurers often raise their premiums. Kellogg’s Amanda Starc and her colleague argue that, to create a truly healthy health-insurance marketplace, regulators and policymakers need a framework for rethinking the complex interactions between adverse selection and regulatory guardrails.
Assessing the Advances Made on Vertical Mergers in the Final Merger Guidelines
Steven C. Salop evaluates the final version of the 2023 Merger Guidelines on vertical merger analysis and certain rebuttal arguments. He finds that the final Guidelines successfully incorporate developments in the economic scholarship and update antitrust enforcement with the tools to analyze non-horizontal mergers in an increasingly digital economy.
How the Illumina/Grail Opinion Updates Case Law on Vertical Mergers and “Litigating the Fix”
Steven C. Salop analyzes the Fifth Circuit Court’s opinion accepting the Federal Trade Commission’s suit to block Illumina’s acquisition of Grail. The ruling sheds light on how courts may approach vertical merger analysis and “litigating the fix” in the future, and what this may mean for the Merger Guidelines’ approach to vertical mergers.
Rivals’ Exit Should Be Incorporated into the Guidelines for Vertical Merger Evaluation
An exit-inducing vertical merger might reduce welfare even if it is a welfare-enhancing vertical merger absent exit. Therefore, the possibility for rivals’ exit should be incorporated into the guidelines for vertical merger evaluation, write Javier D. Donna and Pedro Pereira in new research.
The FTC Was Correct to Withdraw the Vertical Merger Guidelines
The 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines, now withdrawn by the FTC, did not represent sound merger policy, argues Steven Salop; rather, they were overly defendant-friendly...
Missing the Forest for the Trees: A Reply to Hovenkamp and Shapiro
The Federal Trade Commission’s now-abandoned 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines were not some ideal economic document that the FTC foolishly disregarded; rather, they failed spectacularly...
How Will the FTC Evaluate Vertical Mergers?
The Federal Trade Commission’s recent withdrawal of its 2020 vertical merger guidelines is flatly incorrect as a matter of microeconomic theory and is contrary...
