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 Biden Competition Policy Paradigm Has Been Primarily Post-Chicago, Not Neo-Brandeisian

Steven C. Salop writes that the Biden administration oversaw a paradigm shift in antitrust, but it was the full adoption of the ideas of the Post-Chicago school, whose intellectual influence has countered Chicago since the 1980s, rather than the empowerment of the Anti-Monopoly or Neo-Brandeisian school of thought. This latter school of thought played an important role by motivating increased enforcement and corralling political support, even if it did not lead to cases that could not have been brought by Post-Chicagoans.

Why an Android Divestiture Is a Necessary Google Search Remedy

Steven C. Salop writes that only Google’s full divestiture of its Android operating system can avoid incentives on the part of Android and Google to preference Google’s apps, including its search engine, and stifle competition.

The Next Administration Must Protect Workers From Monopsony Bargaining Power

Steven C. Salop recommends that the next presidential administration continue to focus competition policy on protecting against adverse labor market outcomes. He suggests several policies the administration might pursue to achieve these benefits.

What Is an Effective Remedy in the Google Search Case?

Steve Salop explores the basis for warranting strong remedies in the Google Search case and the set of remedies Judge Amit Mehta might consider for restoring competition in the search market by jump-starting the competitive process.

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.

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