Bureau of Economics Releases Economic Issues Paper on Treatment of Efficiencies in Merger Matters

– The Bureau of Economics has released an Economic Issues Paper that studies the treatment of efficiencies in FTC merger matters. It is available on the Commission’s Web site. The paper was undertaken to determine the types of efficiencies claims made by parties in merger matters before the Commission. Further work explored how the staff treated specific types of claims. The study examined the ten years following the 1997 issuance of the expanded efficiencies section in the Horizontal Merger Guidelines.

The paper considers 186 mergers reviewed by the FTC and involved a review of the efficiencies discussion, if any, in both Bureau of Competition and Bureau of Economics memoranda submitted to the Commission for decision regarding a merger. The authors used the information gathered to analyze how the bureaus evaluated the parties’ efficiency claims, and compared these evaluations to each other, leading to the findings presented in the paper. (The staff contacts are Andrew J. Heimert, Bureau of Competition, 202-326-2474, and Malcom B. Coate, Bureau of Economics, 202-326-3351; other issues papers from the Bureau of Economics can be found on the Commission’s Web site at: http://www.ftc.gov/be/economicissuespapers.shtm.)

Copies of the documents mentioned in this release are available from the FTC’s Web site at http://www.ftc.gov and from the FTC’s Consumer Response Center, Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20580. Call toll-free: 1-877-FTC-HELP.

(FYI 6.2009.wpd)