Multi-Jurisdictional Merger Control Accounting For Decisional Errors

Divergent decisions in multi-jurisdictional merger reviews have led to an ongoing debate about their impact and whether policies such as cooperation and comity between competition authorities are the answer. In this article, Neil Dryden and Ben Dubowitz¹ assess the impact of this divergence and whether competition authorities can achieve better outcomes for their own consumers. Using a stylised model, they show that in cases where each competition authority wields an effective veto, there are higher rates of merger prohibition and higher overall policy error rates. They then consider possible strategies that authorities could adopt in principle to minimise policy error and improve consumer outcomes.