Mergers as Monopolization

We tend to think of mergers and monopolization as separate and distinct branches of antitrust. Using Section 2 to attack mergers raises the question of whether merger enforcement has been ineffective. But there is another explanation. The legal and economic frameworks are most developed when it comes to strategic horizontal mergers, and correspondingly less developed when it comes to mergers involving nascent competitors. Merger analysis under Hart-Scott-Rodino is a predictive exercise. The “a