INDUSTRY TRADE BALANCE AND DOMESTIC MERGER POLICY: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM U.S. MERGER POLICY FOR MANUFACTURING SECTORS

Joseph Clougherty

Contemporary Economic Policy, 2005, vol. 23, issue 3, 404-415

Abstract: The literature on antitrust in an open‐economy setting is inconclusive with respect to the role played by trade balance on the tenor of domestic merger policy. Using a panel dataset composed of U.S. merger reviews by industrial sector over the 1982–2001 period, I empirically test the impact of sectoral trade balance on the level of antitrust scrutiny. The results suggest that larger trade balances lead to more vigorous antitrust scrutiny; thus “strategic” merger policy does not appear evident, and consumer surplus appears to guide U.S. merger policy even under the lure of international competitive gains.

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1093/cep/byi030

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:23:y:2005:i:3:p:404-415

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://ordering.onl ... 5-7287&ref=1465-7287

Access Statistics for this article

Contemporary Economic Policy is currently edited by Brad R. Humphreys

More articles in Contemporary Economic Policy from Western Economic Association International Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().