Rewriting the Horizontal Merger Guidelines in the Name of Dynamic Competition

Abstract

We favor revision of the Horizontal Merger Guidelines. Our preliminary comments in this essay are based on a work in progress that we provisionally entitle, “Favoring Dynamic Competition over Static Competition.” The eventual paper will address, in greater detail than we can explore here, how government enforcement agencies and courts would apply a more explicitly dynamic model of competition to merger analysis. We pose the following question: How must competition policy evolve if it is explicitly to favor Schumpeterian (dynamic) competition over neoclassical (static) competition? Of course, one also could ask that question with respect to intellectual property law and sector-specific regulation of network industries. We intend to do so in our eventual paper.