Government policy is more effective when the enforcement regime is transparent, because the economy benefits from the resulting reduction in transactions costs. The Federal Trade Commission has promoted transparency through a number of formal and informal programs. Examples include detailed...

This paper empirically analyzes the Federal Trade Commission's merger enforcement decisions, to supplement the 2004 release of the Horizontal Merger Investigation Data. The study provides insights into the review process for both multi- and single-market mergers. We present concentration-based...