Assessing the Quality of Competition Policy: The Case of Horizontal Merger Enforcement
William Kovacic, Apr 30, 2009
This article suggests how a jurisdiction might best go about evaluating the quality of its competition policy system. It urges that competition agencies and collateral institutions strive to improve our ability to measure the economic effects of merger control and to verify the consequences of different approaches to enforcement. The article uses merger control in the United States as its main illustration, but the article´s observations apply to other areas of competition policy oversight, as well. The article seeks to encourage the recent trend within the global competition policy community of accepting a norm that focuses greater attention on the evaluation of the economic effects of enforcement decisions especially by developing better quantitative measures of actual economic effects and the assessment of the processes by which competition agencies examine individual transactions.
Featured News
Acima Reaches Deal With 43 States Over Consumer Leasing Practices
Nov 12, 2026 by
CPI
Michigan Takes Aim at Mackinac Island Ferry Monopoly in Antitrust Fight
Nov 12, 2026 by
CPI
Farmers Union Blames Corporate Consolidation for Rising Grocery Costs
Nov 12, 2026 by
CPI
South Korea Weighs Bank-Controlled Stablecoin Rules as Fintech Firms Push Back
Nov 12, 2026 by
CPI
EU Closes Antitrust Probe Into Dutch Rail Operator NS
Nov 12, 2026 by
CPI
Antitrust Mix by CPI
Antitrust Chronicle® – Data Portability
Nov 12, 2026 by
CPI
Mandating Access to a Dominant Platform’s Inferred Data: A Two Scenario Diagnosis
Nov 12, 2026 by
Sean Ennis
Data Portability Between Individual Control and Data Sharing at Scale
Nov 12, 2026 by
Jasper van den Boom & Inge Graef
Information Also Wants to Be Expensive: Data Portability and the Open-Systems Creed
Nov 12, 2026 by
Justin (Gus) Hurwitz
Data Portability’s Cybersecurity Paradox: When Protecting Consumer Data Restricts Competition
Nov 12, 2026 by
Sasha Hondagneu-Messner