The State of U.S. Federal Antitrust Enforcement

By Michael Kades (Equitable Growth)

Competition policy in the United States has become a major public policy issue for the first time in decades, but discussion about the current U.S. antitrust enforcement regime has been less systematic. Antitrust enforcement is often treated as a single entity, but multiple forces affect both the intensity and effectiveness of enforcement. This report examines enforcement activity (the number and type of cases that enforcers bring), the resources Congress provides for antitrust enforcement, and, in the federal system, the merger filing-fee system that has become the primary source of antitrust funding. Understanding the basic patterns of federal enforcement offer a window into core antitrust enforcement and provides a measure for weighing and questioning the relative impact of the contributing factors to the success or failure of U.S. antitrust law today.

his report examines federal antitrust enforcement in terms of activity, resources, and merger fees. Although descriptive statistics do not establish causation, they offer a window into core antitrust enforcement…

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