Win or Lose in the Federal Courts (beta version)

Federal Court Merger Decision Analysis

Click on open cells to input parameters into javascript program, then obtain estimates of the probability of court injunction by clicking on calculate statement. (Click on the variable description for more details on the variable.)

Explanation of Data Requirements

Example of Valid Input Parameters

Input Relevant Data
Herfindahl associated with merger; range 1000 to 10000
Indicator of Strong Barriers to Entry range 0 to 1
Net number of special conditions; often in range of -2 to 2
The model uses coefficient estimates contained in "Merger Analysis in the Courts," Managerial and Decision Economics, 16(6), November 1995, 581-592.

A number of merger challenges fail due to the plaintiff's inability to substantiate a relevant market likely to suffer an anticompetitive effect. Thus (assuming statistical independence) the probability of an injunction is the product of the probability the plaintiff establishes a market and the probability of success in this model. Therefore, the result given above is an upper bound on the probability of an injunction.