Apuntes sobre la intervención de C. A. Varney en el "workshop" sobre la revisión de las Guías de integraciones horizontales (II)

Un segundo punto que me llamó la atención mucho sobre la intervención de la señora C. A. Varney, fue su pronunciamiento sobre el mil veces mentado índice de concentración HHI. En escritos varios he manifestado la falta de utilidad de la aplicación mecánica del índice para evaluar el nivel de concentración de un mercado. Pues la señora prácticamente "bajó del bus" al HHI. Véamos:

"The next area I would like to discuss is one where the Guidelines appear to inaccurately describe the Agencies' enforcement policy. As the Merger Challenges Data that I referred to earlier in this talk indicate, it is relatively rare for the Agencies to challenge mergers that will lead to HHI concentration levels below 1,800. (12) Yet the Guidelines indicate that such mergers "potentially raise significant competitive concerns." (13) Similarly, the Guidelines suggest that a 100 point increase in an HHI concentration level raises competitive concerns. (14)In actual practice, however, the Agencies have only infrequently challenged mergers unless they increase concentration several times that much. (15)

More broadly, our panelists have generally confirmed that the Guidelines overstate the importance of HHIs in merger analysis. It will not surprise you that HHIs have been the focus of neither a party presentation nor a staff recommendation since I've been the Assistant Attorney General. That reality reflects the current state of economic thinking, where HHI levels are given a far less prominent place as a predictive tool for assessing competitive effects than the one suggested by the current Guidelines. In that vein, I note that, while many panelists have noted their usefulness as a tool for assessing likely competitive effects, none has maintained that HHIs should be the key driver of enforcement decisions.

It is thus relatively clear that the HHI thresholds set forth in the Guidelines no longer capture agency practice or economic learning about the kinds of mergers that are most likely to lead to consumer harm. Revising the HHI thresholds to express accurately how the Agencies use HHIs seems not just appropriate but also necessary to correct what has become an affirmative misstatement at this point."

Apuntes sobre la intervención de C. A. Varney en el "workshop" sobre la revisión de las Guías de integraciones horizontales

En relación con las palabras que pronunció el día de ayer, 27 de enero, la señora Christine A. Varney, asistente del Attorney General del DOJ, en el último "workshop" sobre la revisión de las Guías sobre Integraciones Horizontales (intactas desde 1992, salvo por la sección sobre eficiencias) quiero resaltar su referencia al giro del Juez Posner en el sentido de que se convirtió en Keynesiano (véase, Richard A. Posner, How I Became a Keynesian: Second Thoughts in a Recession, New Republic, Sept. 23, 2009, at 34, 35). Tan pronto leí esa afirmación busqué el artículo citado y me encontré con las siguientes sorpresas:

"We have learned since September [Nota: hace alusión a la crisis de los bancos] that the present generation of economists has not figured out how the economy works. The vast majority of them were blindsided by the housing bubble and the ensuing banking crisis; and misjudged the gravity of the economic downturn that resulted; and were perplexed by the inability of orthodox monetary policy administered by the Federal Reserve to prevent such a steep downturn; and could not agree on what, if anything, the government should do to halt it and put the economy on the road to recovery." (...)

"Baffled by the profession's disarray, I decided I had better read The General Theory. Having done so, I have concluded that, despite its antiquity, it is the best guide we have to the crisis." (...)

"The dominant conception of economics today, and one that has guided my own academic work in the economics of law, is that economics is the study of rational choice. People are assumed to make rational decisions across the entire range of human choice, including but not limited to market transactions, by employing a form (usually truncated and informal) of cost-benefit analysis. The older view was that economics is the study of the economy, employing whatever assumptions seem realistic and whatever analytical methods come to hand. Keynes wanted to be realistic about decision-making rather than explore how far an economist could get by assuming that people really do base decisions on some approximation to cost-benefit analysis." (...)

"So I will let a contrite Gregory Mankiw, writing in November 2008 in The New York Times, amid a collapsing economy, have the last word: "If you were going to turn to only one economist to understand the problems facing the economy, there is little doubt that the economist would be John Maynard Keynes. Although Keynes died more than a half-century ago, his diagnosis of recessions and depressions remains the foundation of modern macroeconomics. His insights go a long way toward explaining the challenges we now confront. . . . Keynes wrote, ‘Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slave of some defunct economist.' In 2008, no defunct economist is more prominent than Keynes himself."

El control de las concentraciones empresariales en Colombia

He puesto a su disposición un extenso documento sobre el control de concentraciones empresariales en Colombia que he escrito con el doctor Alfonso Miranda. El documento está disponible:

http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1021998

Título: "El control de las concentraciones empresariales en Colombia"

Autores: Alfonso Miranda L. y Juan D. Gutiérrez R.

Resumen: El control a las concentraciones empresariales constituye una de las más importantes expresiones del Derecho de la Competencia. En efecto esta herramienta le permite a la autoridad de la competencia (cuando el control es previo como en el caso colombiano) impedir que se lleven a cabo operaciones que restrinjan indebidamente la competencia, o bien, autorizarlas en forma condicionada –a través de condicionamientos- con el fin de que la autoridad pueda garantizar la preservación de la libre competencia en los mercados. El propósito de este documento es hacer una presentación del régimen de control de concentraciones empresariales colombiano, determinar su naturaleza, su estructura, identificar las diferentes posiciones doctrinales adoptadas por la Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio, y su evolución en los últimos años.

Palabras clave: derecho de la competencia, concentración empresarial, control de concentraciones, condicionamientos, integraciones horizontales, integraciones verticales, concentraciones de conglomerado, Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio,

JEL: K21, K23.

***

Abstract: Merger review is one of the most important aspects of Competition Law. This tool allows the competition authority (when the review is ex ante as in the Colombian case) to hinder the transactions that unduly restrict competition or authorize them under certain conditions –through merger remedies- which guarantees the preservation of free competition in the markets. The purpose of this document is to present the Colombian merger control regime, determine its nature, its structure, identify the different doctrinal positions adopted by the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce and its evolution in the last years.

Key Words: competition law, mergers & acquisitions, merger review, merger remedies, horizontal mergers, vertical mergers, conglomerate mergers, Superintendency of Industry and Commerce.

JEL: K21, K23.