We use Monte Carlo experiments to evaluate whether "upward pricing pressure" (UPP) accurately predicts the price effects of mergers, motivated by the observation that UPP is a restricted form of the first order approximation derived in Jaffe and Weyl (2013). Results indicate that UPP is quite...

We analyze the accuracy of first order approximation, a method developed theoretically in Jaffe and Weyl (2012) for predicting the price effects of mergers, and provide an empirical application. Approximation is an alternative to the model-based simulations commonly employed in industrial...