Market data and participants’ views in horizontal merger analysis

Merger analysis draws inferences from quantitative study of market data, and it does so in several ways whose contrasts are often stressed. But it also draws inferences from the views of customers and other participants. Both types of inference are valuable, and they are used together more often than separately, as neither one is clearly more reliable than the other. Differences between types of evidence are a strength of an overall enquiry, when evidence is used together, and it is not necessarily productive to try to make either more like the other.