Does Merger Enforcement Protect Consumers from the Long-Term Costs of Consolidation?

This article suggests that U.S. merger enforcement, while more effective at preventing harmful mergers in the short term, does not work as well to avoid scenarios that pose significant costs on consumers over the long-term. These scenarios involve markets that are affected by successive mergers, large mergers, and strategically motived serial acquisitions that can, variously, fortify barriers to entry, create market power bottlenecks, and accelerate the loss of independent competitors. The analy