Steven Salop

Steven Salop is a Professor of Economics and Law at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC, where he teaches antitrust law and economics. His research and consulting focuses on antitrust, competition, and regulation. He has written numerous articles in various areas of antitrust and competition which take a modern “Post-Chicago” approach. These include a number of articles with various co-authors on the competitive effects of vertical mergers. Professor Salop has also written economics and law articles focused on various types of exclusionary conduct, monopolization, analysis of various aspects of horizontal mergers and joint ventures, facilitating practices, and role of decision theory in legal rulemaking. Professor Salop earned a BA degree at the University of Pennsylvania, Summa Cum Laude, and an M.Phil. and PhD in Economics from Yale University. Professor Salop has been honored with lifetime achievement awards from the AALS antitrust section and the American Antitrust Institute.

The Purchase of Unionized Labor Is a Relevant Buyer-Side Market in the Kroger-Albertsons Merger

Critics of the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit last week to block the Kroger-Albertsons merger claim that the agency incorrectly limits the relevant buyer-side market to unionized grocery workers. Steve C. Salop argues that the critics are wrong, and that standard antitrust analysis shows the FTC has it right.

Why Business Should Be More Prosocial, and Ten Guidelines for How

Business and economic thought instituted at least since the Reagan revolution in the United States have promoted firms’ narrowly self-interested, profit-maximizing conduct even at the expense of consumers and workers. This paradigm leads to social distrust and insufficient cooperation. Steven C. Salop explains this distortion and proposes 10 guidelines by which firms can self-moderate their behavior to produce prosocial outcomes.

Assessing the Advances Made on Vertical Mergers in the Final Merger Guidelines

Steven C. Salop evaluates the final version of the 2023 Merger Guidelines on vertical merger analysis and certain rebuttal arguments. He finds that the final Guidelines successfully incorporate developments in the economic scholarship and update antitrust enforcement with the tools to analyze non-horizontal mergers in an increasingly digital economy.

How the Illumina/Grail Opinion Updates Case Law on Vertical Mergers and “Litigating the Fix”

Steven C. Salop analyzes the Fifth Circuit Court’s opinion accepting the Federal Trade Commission’s suit to block Illumina’s acquisition of Grail. The ruling sheds light on how courts may approach vertical merger analysis and “litigating the fix” in the future, and what this may mean for the Merger Guidelines’ approach to vertical mergers.

Merger Law Reaches Acquirer Incentives and Private Equity Strategies

Steven C. Salop argues that Section 7 of the Clayton Act prohibits mergers in which the acquiring firm’s unilateral incentives and business strategy are likely to lessen market competition.

Revising Guideline 6 With Evidence To Establish a Structural Inference for Input Foreclosure

Vertical merger law lacks the structural presumption of horizontal merger law, which shifts the burden from the government to the merging parties to provide evidence that a merger will not produce anticompetitive effects when it is known that the merger will substantially increase market concentration. To improve Guideline 6 of the draft Merger Guidelines concerning vertical foreclosure, Steven Salop develops a three-factor criteria with which the government antitrust agencies can show an analogous structural “inference” that shifts the burden of evidence to the merging parties.

Steven Salop: Burdens of Proof and Presumptions in the Merger Guidelines

Steven Salop provides his round-two comments on the draft Merger Guidelines.

Steven Salop and Jennifer Sturiale: Vertical Merger Enforcement in the Draft Merger Guidelines

Steven Salop and Jennifer Sturiale provide their round-one comments on the draft Merger Guidelines.

The Reasonable Competitive Conduct Standard for Antitrust

The Stigler Center’s 2023 Antitrust and Competition conference seeks to answer the question: what lays beyond the consumer welfare standard? In advance of the...

An Excessive Evidentiary Burden Sunk the FTC’s Case Against the Meta/Within Merger

In early February, a district court judge rejected the FTC’s preliminary injunction suit to block Meta’s purchase of Within, a developer of a virtual...

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