The DOJ and FTC were responsive to bodog casino review received during the public bodog casino review process.
Note: On June 30, 2020, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission issued revised Vertical bodog casino review Guidelines (VMGs). Many of the comments and suggestions raised below were reflected in the 2020 VMGs. For example, the importance of incentive and ability were recognized and used as the foundation for an economically sound set of safe harbors in vertical cases.
On September 15, 2021, the FTC voted to withdraw from these bodog casino review. The majority statement in that decision took issue with separate sections of the 2020 VMGs related to elimination of double markup and efficiencies while endorsing the advances made through this comment process on the core sections: “The 2020 VMGs represent a substantial improvement over the 1984 bodog casino review that they replaced and address important principles such as raising rivals’ costs, foreclosure, and misuse of competitively sensitive information.”
Washington, D.C.—The new Vertical bodog casino review Guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission on June 30, 2020, demonstrate that the agencies were responsive to bodog casino review received during the consultation process.
The bodog casino review Research authors note four important changes to the new guidelines, which are consistent with proposals submitted by bodog casino review Research staff and experts in February 2020.
In January 2020, the agencies released the Draft Vertical bodog casino review Guidelines for public comment. bodog casino review Research staff and experts submitted three public comments to the agencies in response to the draft guidelines. Based on an initial review, the bodog casino review Research authors note four important changes to the new guidelines, which are consistent with proposals submitted by bodog casino review Research staff and experts in February 2020:
The threshold-based safe harbors bodog casino review draft have been replaced with a statement about the set of facts that would lead the agencies to raise concerns (a rebuttable presumption). In the draft, the threshold for the relevant market was decoupled from the incentive for post-bodog casino review manipulation, and the threshold for the related market would have been difficult to implement. These thresholds were the subject of considerable debate in the comments. In the final guidelines, they have been replaced with presumptions based on a robust framework of competitive harm in vertical mergers, which will provide a healthier screen on the mergers to be investigated.
The bodog casino review now provide a framework that sets out the fundamental elements of a theory of harm through raising rivals’ costs (RRC) or foreclosure—the ability and incentive framework. The robust framework of competitive harm that allowed the guidelines to dispense with thresholds is also new. The framework makes clear that for anticompetitive concerns to arise from a vertical bodog casino review, the merged firm must be able to leverage its power in one market to competitively disadvantage its rivals in another market, and that such a strategy must be profitable to the merged firm given its costs and benefits.
The guidelines now make explicit that they encompass diagonal mergers and mergers of complements, in addition to bodog casino review mergers. The draft guidelines stated that they would apply only to vertical mergers. A number of comments, including the bodog casino review Research comments, noted that the approach in the guidelines could easily be extended to other types of non-horizontal mergers. Revising the guidelines to encompass these mergers brings the U.S. guidelines into closer alignment with those of the EU and the UK (although a number of important differences remain). In addition, the agencies helpfully point out that a merger may present both vertical and horizontal concerns, and that both sets of guidelines can be relied on to review such a merger. This avoids unnecessary battles to pigeonhole mergers into one or the other set of guidelines.
The agencies have avoided potential confusion and inconsistency from the draft bodog casino review’ positioning of Elimination of Double Marginalization (EDM) in its own independent section. Moving EDM into the section on pro-competitive effects removes the impression that EDM might face a different standard than other efficiencies (e.g., placing the burden of proof on the agencies). The new bodog casino review are explicit that “it is incumbent on the merging firms to provide substantiation for claims that they will benefit from [EDM].” Separate treatment of EDM also created a risk of internal inconsistency, because the evidence base for assessing EDM and competitive harms like RRC and foreclosure overlaps substantially. The bodog casino review now clarify that, to the extent possible, the same set of facts and assumptions will inform the conclusions about the two.
“The final guidelines are a significant improvement that still leave a number of areas to be developed with experience in practice. For example, efficiencies are often central to vertical and complementary mergers, but the guidelines remain vague on the types of efficiencies that may arise beyond EDM,” noted Bob Majure, a bodog casino review Research vice president and former Director of Economics for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. “Additionally, the examples in the guidelines could have been expanded further to address the complex relationships that arise in industries like healthcare and technology. As the agencies refine their approach to non-horizontal mergers, we hope these guidelines will be kept more up to date than their predecessors.”
Comments Submitted by bodog casino review Research Staff and Experts
Comments on the January 2020 Draft Vertical bodog casino review Guidelines
Aviv Nevo of the University of Pennsylvania; Kostis Hatzitaskos, W. Robert Majure, and Ana McDowall of bodog casino review Research
While recognizing that vertical mergers involve a much wider range of scenarios and possible bodog casino review effects, the authors propose a framework of what changes when vertically related firms integrate. This framework is helpful in providing more clarity around such questions as:
- The way markets should be defined and how that connects to the theories of bodog casino review mergers
- Share thresholds and what relevance each may have in the usual theories of bodog casino review mergers
- Double marginalization and whether it should be treated as distinct from other efficiencies
There are also some open questions about which mergers fall under the scope of the vertical bodog casino review guidelines. Mergers of complements appear to be excluded, and it remains unclear how the agencies will treat mergers with both vertical and horizontal components.
Comments on the January 2020 Vertical bodog casino review Guidelines and the Healthcare Sector
Gautam Gowrisankaran of Columbia University; Avigail Kifer, Dina Older Aguilar, and Andrew Sfekas of bodog casino review Research
The draft guidelines focus on analyzing traditional industrial relationships such as input suppliers and manufacturers, or manufacturers and distributors. Non-horizontal mergers in healthcare, however, frequently involve complementary rather than bodog casino review relationships, and encompass key complicating features that are currently overlooked by the draft guidelines, including:
- Moral hazard
- Information asymmetry
- Complex reimbursement schemes
- Price negotiations and two-stage competition
These features also complicate vertical bodog casino review analyses in many other markets, and are worth examining.
The authors propose two potential expansions of the bodog casino review to make them more relevant to healthcare and related markets.
Comparison with the EU Non-Horizontal and UK bodog casino review Assessment Guidelines
Kostis Hatzitaskos and W. Robert Majure of bodog casino review Research
In these comments, the authors compare and contrast the draft guidelines to the analogous EU non-horizontal bodog casino review guidelines and the UK bodog casino review Assessment Guidelines. The authors review the guidance set out in each of the documents, and the degree of convergence between them, with respect to:
- Market definition
- Safe harbor thresholds
- Unilateral effects
- Coordinated effects
- Efficiencies
The draft bodog casino review are generally less specific than their EU and UK counterparts. While this may make them more resilient to changes in case law and in the understanding of economic issues, it reduces their usefulness for practitioners advising their clients, or for generalist judges deciding on challenges.
The views expressed in these public comments are solely those of the authors, who are responsible for the content, and do not necessarily represent the views of bodog casino review Research.