Is Data “The New Oil”? Non-Price Effects of Mergers In Data-Intensive Industries

In recent years, antitrust authorities and industry observers have called for closer scrutiny of the non-price effects of mergers in data-intensive industries. Many of the concerns expressed focus on businesses where the collection and use of proprietary data are a significant input to each of the merging parties’ products and strategies, but the data do not themselves constitute the main product. Economic analysis of such mergers can reveal ways in which the combination of datasets may impact