In this episode, Roger Noll, AAI Senior Fellow and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, talks with winners of the 2020 Jerry S. Cohen award for antitrust scholarship. Nancy Rose and Jonathan Sallet unpack key aspects of efficiencies in horizontal mergers in their article The Dichotomous Treatment of Efficiencies in Horizontal Mergers, Too Much? Too Little? Getting it Right (Vol. 168, Penn. L. Rev., 2020). The article highlights that the extent to which horizontal mergers deliver competitive benefits that offset any potential for competitive harm is a critical issue in antitrust enforcement. Based on their economic analysis of merger efficiencies, the authors find that a substantial body of work casts doubt on their presumed existence and size. Rose and Sallet discuss the major implications of their work in this Ruled by Reason conversation, including the likely need for changes in current enforcement approaches.

Antitrust scholarship that is considered and selected for the Jerry S. Cohen award reflects a concern for principles of economic justice, the dispersal of economic power, the maintenance of effective limitations upon economic power or the federal statutes designed to protect society from various forms of anticompetitive activity. Scholarship reflects an awareness of the human and social impacts of economic institutions upon individuals, small businesses and other institutions necessary to the maintenance of a just and humane society–values and concerns Jerry S. Cohen dedicated his life and work to fostering.