This book chapter (forthcoming in Antitrust Stories) tells the story of the FTC's successful 1997 effort to block the proposed Staples/Office Depot merger. It describes the competing presentations of the FTC and the merging firms during the preliminary injunction hearing and places that trial in...

An increasing body of empirical evidence is documenting trends toward rising concentration, profits, and markups in many industries around the world since the 1980s. Two major criticisms of these studies is that concentration and market shares are poorly measured at the national industry level...

An increasing body of empirical evidence is documenting trends toward rising concentration, profits, and markups in many industries around the world since the 1980s. Two major criticisms of these studies is that concentration and market shares are poorly measured at the national industry level...

We describe a simple initial indicator of whether a proposed merger between rivals in a differentiated product industry is likely to raise prices through unilateral effects. Our diagnostic calibrates upward pricing pressure (UPP) resulting from the merger, based on the price/cost margins of the...

Even a cursory review of the Antitrust Division's new Merger Guidelines reveals that they revolve around the concept of “concentration” and advance a particular method of measuring it – the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. While concentration is scarcely a new idea in the antitrust treatment of...

On September 4, 1996, the two largest office superstore chains in the United States, Office Depot and Staples, announced their agreement to merge. Seven months later, the Federal Trade Commission voted 4 to 1 to oppose the merger on the grounds that it was likely to harm competition and lead to...