My answer to this will be disappointing, but still:
no
The reason for this is simple: Mr Resig’s implementation of merge (or “extend” as it’s called for objects) in jQuery is doing a loop, just like the one in your question. You can look at it here. And I dare say that if John Resig hasn’t found a clever build-in way to do it, then the mere mortals of stackoverflow won’t either 🙂