In October 2022, Kroger and Albertsons announced their intent to merge the two companies in a deal valued at $24.6 billion. The combined company would be the third largest food and grocery retailer, behind Walmart and Amazon. Based on the Federal Trade Commission’s recently release draft...

The Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Justice Department’s request for information on whether and how to update the antitrust agencies’ merger-enforcement guidelines is based on several faulty premises and appears to presuppose a preferred outcome: stronger (rather than optimal) merger...

Previous work on exit in declining industries has neglected mergers. We examine a simple model that predicts which declining industries experience horizontal mergers. Mergers are more likely if 1) market concentration is high; 2) the inverse demand curve is steep at high levels of output and...

We present evidence that event studies can help antitrust agencies forecast impacts of mergers on innovation. In large pharmaceutical mergers, cumulative abnormal returns on portfolios of rivals predict post-merger changes in the combined firm's R&D intensity. More favorable impacts on rivals...