Whether philosophers pursuing knowledge or statesmen seeking counsel for their troubles, many in ancient times traveled to the Oracle at Delphi, who besides her famous maxim “know thyself” also proclaimed “know what you have learned.” With U.S. antitrust law now in turmoil and searching for new wisdom, its own savants will soon issue their own Delphic edict: new merger guidelines.
As Bruce Kobayashi and I show in a new study for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, far from following the advice of the ancient Oracle, the new guidelines risk ignoring lessons about sound antitrust policy that led to a bipartisan consensus for enforcing the antitrust laws.
