The Role of Economic Evidence in Merger Control in Ireland: Current and Future Practice

"The paper is structured as follows. Section B considers what is meant by evidence, including economic, in merger control. Next, attention turns in section C to the relative importance of factual compared to economic and opinion-based evidence across the over 300 merger notifications filed with the Authority between 2003 and 2006. In only a small number of cases—less than 10% of all mergers—is economic evidence likely to be of importance. This issue is addressed in section D. In section E the role and importance of various kinds of evidence is discussed in relation to this small set of mergers. Finally, in section F some of the issues identified in the opening paragraph are explored."