      Predicting the Competitive Effects of Mergers by Listening
to Customers   Ken Heyer * EAG 06-11    September 2006      This
article explores the role of customers in informing competition
authorities and courts about the likely effects of proposed
mergers. It discusses when, and about what, customers are most
likely to be valuable sources of information. It also discusses
the potential limitations of customer testimony. Customer views
can certainly be informative. However, they are best employed as
a complement to, rather than a substitute for, economic analysis
that employs more objective evidence. Although the welfare of
consumers appears increasingly to have been accepted by
competition authorities as the appropriate goal for merger
policy, customers will not necessarily have available the
information required to predict the economic consequences of a
proposed merger. And even when they do, customers may be
reluctant reliably and accurately to provide that information,
or to express their true opinio