Recent Trends In Merger Enforcement in the United States: The Increasing Impact of Economic Analysis

From its modern origins more than thirty years ago federal merger policy has centered around the use of standard surrogates for market power to make presumptions about the likely effects of mergers. Since that time it has been evolving towards an increasingly complex approach as economic considerations have expanded their influence on merger policy. This trend was solidified in the 1982 revision of the Department of Justice\u27s Merger Guidelines, accelerated by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines\u27 increased emphasis on unilateral (as opposed to collusive) anticompetitive effects, and has reached new heights in the last few years with new unilateral theories and the application of econometric analysis of market data and game-theory based simulation programs. In effect, merger policy has been moving away from reliance on surrogates and towards an approach that instead tells an economics-based story of anticompetitive harm — an approach that directly asks and answers the ultimate question: are prices to consumers likely to increase as a result of a merger? This new approach can lead to surprising conclusions. Many of these issues will be illustrated through the analysis of a merger enforcement action that was the largest, most economically complex, and among the most controversial ever brought by the Federal Trade Commission — its challenge to the Staples/Office Depot transaction

Recent Trends In Merger Enforcement in the United States: The Increasing Impact of Economic Analysis

From its modern origins more than thirty years ago federal merger policy has centered around the use of standard surrogates for market power to make presumptions about the likely effects of mergers. Since that time it has been evolving towards an increasingly complex approach as economic considerations have expanded their influence on merger policy. This trend was solidified in the 1982 revision of the Department of Justice\u27s Merger Guidelines, accelerated by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission 1992 Horizontal Merger Guidelines\u27 increased emphasis on unilateral (as opposed to collusive) anticompetitive effects, and has reached new heights in the last few years with new unilateral theories and the application of econometric analysis of market data and game-theory based simulation programs. In effect, merger policy has been moving away from reliance on surrogates and towards an approach that instead tells an economics-based story of anticompetitive harm — an approach that directly asks and answers the ultimate question: are prices to consumers likely to increase as a result of a merger? This new approach can lead to surprising conclusions. Many of these issues will be illustrated through the analysis of a merger enforcement action that was the largest, most economically complex, and among the most controversial ever brought by the Federal Trade Commission — its challenge to the Staples/Office Depot transaction

From Surrogates to Stories: The Evolution of Federal Merger Policy

This article traces the evolution of federal merger policy. It documents how merger enforcement originally was largely based upon very strong structural presumptions. These presumptions gradually eroded and other factors became more and more important in enforcement decisions. Today meger enforcement essentially consists of structural safe harbors and a full rule of reason analysis for any merger not within these safe harbors

Reevaluating Traditional International Service-Learning during a Global Pandemic

Engineers in Action (EIA) Bridge Program provides engineering students with international service-learning opportunities through design-build footbridge projects. The conventional project model relies on an implementation trip as a primary learning activity. Prior to the pandemiccaused cancellations of all implementation trips in 2020, EIA resources were already being allocated to increase on-campus learning activities in an effort to improve the inclusivity of the program to students without the financial means to travel and forego paid internships. Online courses were developed using Open edX (https://eiaeducation.org) and the focus of students was shifted from preparing themselves to implement the bridge projects in person, to aiding local staff and communities to implement the projects without EIA students onsite. All student chapters remained actively engaged in their projects through the adapted project preparations and online courses. The successful adaptation of a service-learning project to an online format suggests that students still highly value these educational experiences. In the future, servicelearningprojects should consider offering online formats to engage more engineering studentsacross a wider range of institutions.</p

A mechanism for the non-Fermi-liquid behavior in CeCu_{6-x}Au_x

We propose an explanation for the recently observed non-Fermi-liquid behavior of metallic alloys CeCu_{6-x}Au_x: near x=0.1, the specific heat c is proportional to T \ln (T_0/T) and the resistivity increases linearly with temperature T over a wide range of T. These features follow from a model in which three-dimensional conduction electrons are coupled to two-dimensional critical ferromagnetic fluctuations near the quantum critical point, x_{c}=0.1. This picture is motivated by the neutron scattering data in the ordered phase (x=0.2) and is consistent with the observed phase diagram.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX, 3 figure

NLL soft and Coulomb resummation for squark and gluino production at the LHC

We present predictions of the total cross sections for pair production of squarks and gluinos at the LHC, including the stop-antistop production process. Our calculation supplements full fixed-order NLO predictions with resummation of threshold logarithms and Coulomb singularities at next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) accuracy, including bound-state effects. The numerical effect of higher-order Coulomb terms can be as big or larger than that of soft-gluon corrections. For a selection of benchmark points accessible with data from the 2010-2012 LHC runs, resummation leads to an enhancement of the total inclusive squark and gluino production cross section in the 15-30 % range. For individual production processes of gluinos, the corrections can be much larger. The theoretical uncertainty in the prediction of the hard-scattering cross sections is typically reduced to the 10 % level.Comment: 45 pages, 16 Figures, LaTex. v2: published version. Grids with numerical results for the NLL cross sections for squark and gluino production at the 7/8 TeV LHC are included in the submission and are also available at http://omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~cs1010/susy.htm

Model-independent extraction of ∣Vtq∣|V_{tq}| matrix elements from top-quark measurements at hadron colliders

Current methods to extract the quark-mixing matrix element $|V_{tb}|$ from single-top production measurements assume that $|V_{tb}|\gg |V_{td}|, |V_{ts}|$: top quarks decay into $b$ quarks with 100% branching fraction, s-channel single-top production is always accompanied by a $b$ quark and initial-state contributions from $d$ and $s$ quarks in the $t$-channel production of single top quarks are neglected. Triggered by a recent measurement of the ratio $R=\frac{|V_{tb}|^{2}}{|V_{td}|^{2}+|V_{ts}|^{2}+|V_{tb}|^{2}}=0.90 \pm 0.04$ performed by the D0 collaboration, we consider a $|V_{tb}|$ extraction method that takes into account non zero d- and s-quark contributions both in production and decay. We propose a strategy that allows to extract consistently and in a model-independent way the quark mixing matrix elements $|V_{td}|$, $|V_{ts}|$, and $|V_{tb}|$ from the measurement of $R$ and from single-top measured event yields. As an illustration, we apply our method to the Tevatron data using a CDF analysis of the measured single-top event yield with two jets in the final state one of which is identified as a $b$-quark jet. We constrain the $|V_{tq}|$ matrix elements within a four-generation scenario by combining the results with those obtained from direct measurements in flavor physics and determine the preferred range for the top-quark decay width within different scenarios.Comment: 36 pages, 17 figure

Inclusive top-pair production phenomenology with TOPIXS

We discuss various aspects of inclusive top-quark pair production based on TOPIXS, a new, flexible program that computes the production cross section at the Tevatron and LHC at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy in soft and Coulomb resummation, including bound-state effects and the complete next-to-next-to-leading order result in the q-qbar channel, which has recently become available. We present the calculation of the top-pair cross section in pp collisions at 8 TeV centre-of-mass energy, as well as the cross sections for hypothetical heavy quarks in extensions of the standard model. The dependence on the parton distribution input is studied. Further we investigate the impact of LHC top cross section measurements at sqrt(s)=7 TeV on global fits of the gluon distribution using the NNPDF re-weighting method.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figures; v2: corrected typos in Eqs. (2.8) and (6.2) and the text, added footnote on page 4, matches published versio

Localization corrections to the anomalous Hall effect in a ferromagnet

We calculate the localization corrections to the anomalous Hall conductivity related to the contribution of spin-orbit scattering into the current vertex (side-jump mechanism). We show that in contrast to the ordinary Hall effect, there exists a nonvanishing localization correction to the anomalous Hall resistivity. The correction to the anomalous Hall conductivity vanishes in the case of side-jump mechanism, but is nonzero for the skew scattering. The total correction to the nondiagonal conductivity related to both mechanisms, does not compensate the correction to the diagonal conductivity.Comment: 7 pages with 7 figure