Comcast/NBCU: The FCC Provides a Roadmap for Vertical Merger Analysis

Abstract:     
The FCC’s analysis of the Comcast-NBCU transaction fills a gap in the contemporary treatment of vertical mergers by providing a roadmap for courts and litigants addressing the possibility of anticompetitive exclusion. The FCC identified the factors any judicial or administrative tribunal would likely consider today in analyzing whether a vertical merger would lead to anticompetitive input or customer foreclosure, and a range of economic methods potentially relevant to applying that template to the facts of a transaction. Notwithstanding the difference between administrative adjudication under a public interest standard and judicial decision-making under the Clayton Act, the legal framework and economic studies the Commission employed promise to influence the approach that antitrust tribunals will now take in evaluating vertical mergers.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 7

Keywords: vertical mergers, exclusion, foreclosure

JEL Classification: K21, K23, L40

working papers series