Vertical Mergers and Coordinated Effects: Implications for Merger Policy

Vertical relationships can have coordinated effects with important implications for planned revisions of the U.S. Department of Justice merger guidelines. Despite increased efforts to prosecute explicit collusion, increased fines, and the use of creative detection and enforcement techniques, firms continue to engage in explicit collusion, harming consumers, competitors, and economic dynamism. Firms engage in a wide variety of behaviors to prevent cheating or entry from disrupting collusion. In s