Upward Price Pressure, Merger Simulation, and Merger Simulation Light

Every year, the Federal Trade Commission(“FTC”)and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) are notified of thousands of mergers.  Investigating which mergers are likely to have anticompetitive effects is a difficult, data-intensive, and resource-consuming task. Screens are necessary to target the truly problematic mergers and economize on scarce agency resources.

The agencies have historically relied in part upon a screen f