Mergers have benefits and costs that, in theory, could lead to net benefits or net harms. Comcast’s acquisition of TWC has generated a level of controversy consistent with the $45 billion price. Nevertheless, the question regulators and antitrust authorities must answer is the same as it is for any merger: do the expected benefits that flow from increased efficiencies outweigh the chances that the merger could increase the incentive and ability of the combined firm to behave in anticompetitive behavior and the magnitude of those effects. This paper explored the various arguments for and against the merger.
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Scott Wallsten is President and Senior Fellow at the Technology Policy Institute and also a senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. He is an economist with expertise in industrial organization and public policy, and his research focuses on competition, regulation, telecommunications, the economics of digitization, and technology policy. He was the economics director for the FCC's National Broadband Plan and has been a lecturer in Stanford University’s public policy program, director of communications policy studies and senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a senior fellow at the AEI – Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, an economist at The World Bank, a scholar at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a staff economist at the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University.
