Journal of Economic Perspectives · 2025 · [{"name": "Daniel Francis", "affiliation": ["New York Law School"]}]
中文摘要
2023年，联邦反垄断机构重写了美国旗舰性的并购政策文件，这是旨在对反垄断体系进行深度改革的更广泛“新布兰代斯主义”努力的一部分。其结果——《2023年并购指南》——引发了高度争议：一些人将其誉为革命性的进步，另一些人则批评其是倒退到蒙昧过去的一步。本文将2023年指南置于反垄断现代史的发展脉络中加以评估。文章认为，新指南打破了并购执法主要取向长期以来从结构转向福利的趋势，但它是以谨慎的方式做到这一点的，即在福利主义政策与非福利主义政策之间形成了一种充满张力的模糊性。通过同时引发革命性和渐进性解读，这些机构牺牲了清晰性，并抑制了有益的交易；但它们也——至少目前——推迟了希望维护反垄断主导范式者与希望重塑该范式者之间的尖锐冲突。
Abstract
In 2023, the federal antitrust agencies rewrote the nation's flagship merger policy document, as part of a broader “Neo-Brandeisian” effort to bring about a deep reform of the antitrust system. The result—the 2023 Merger Guidelines—has been highly controversial: celebrated by some as a revolutionary advance, and criticized by others as a step back toward a benighted past. This article evaluates the 2023 guidance against the arc of antitrust's modern history. It argues that the new guidance breaks a long trend of migration from structure toward welfare as the primary orientation of merger enforcement, but that it does so cautiously, by achieving a fraught ambiguity between welfarist and nonwelfarist policies. In inviting both revolutionary and evolutionary readings, the agencies have sacrificed clarity and discouraged beneficial deals, but they have also deferred—at least for now—a sharp conflict between those who would preserve antitrust's governing paradigm and those who would remake it.