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The collection of all scholarly commentary on law, economics, and more

Showing results for:  “price gouging”

I'm a one issue voter

Ok, that’s not really true.  In actuality, I don’t generally vote.  But if I did vote, I think the time is right to be a one issue voter on the issue of antitrust policy.  Seems like everyone has a view on the topic these days.  And on that one issue alone, Hilary Clinton resoundingly and conclusively ... I'm a one issue voter

Antitrust Enforcement Levels and Quality Again: A Hypothetical Conversation

I’ve done some more thinking about my recent post on the problems associated with claims that infer greater antitrust enforcement quality solely from enforcement activity and come to the conclusion that my post oversimplified matters. I remain rather skeptical about this inference but wanted to highlight some of the nuances in the debate that I ... Antitrust Enforcement Levels and Quality Again: A Hypothetical Conversation

Intel’s Loyalty Rebates: Why the Interventionists Are Wrong

The New York Times isn’t the only one calling for the FTC to go after Intel for its purportedly exclusionary discounting. The reliably interventionist American Antitrust Institute concurs. In a recent letter to the FTC, it wrote: Based on allegations by AMD [Advanced Micro Devices] in a private U.S. case and on what we have ... Intel’s Loyalty Rebates: Why the Interventionists Are Wrong

Yet Another Voluntary Pricing Experiment

This time from Paste Magazine (HT: Peter Schwartz via Wired Blog Magazine), and motivated by the Radiohead Experiment, and with an interesting twist: Subscribers who choose to pay more than the normal $19.95 asking price will have their names printed in an upcoming issue of the magazine, but the entire year-long subscription can in fact ... Yet Another Voluntary Pricing Experiment

NYT’s Freudian Slip

I just wandered down to the local Panera Bread for lunch and picked up someone’s discarded copy of today’s New York Times. One of today’s editorials, F.T.C. Goes AWOL, claims that the Federal Trade Commission “clearly shares the ‘starve the regulators and coddle industry’ philosophy that has driven the Bush administration for seven years.” The ... NYT’s Freudian Slip

Teson and Klick on Global Justice and Trade

Larry Solum points to Fernando Teson and Jonathan Klick’s (both of FSU College of Law) Global Justice and Trade: A Puzzling Omission.  It is a thoughtful and provocative paper.  Teson and Klick motivate the paper as an attempt to address the failure of philosophers and human rights scholars not to advocate free trade as a ... Teson and Klick on Global Justice and Trade

Economic Illiteracy of the Week Award Goes To …

Michael Kimmelman at the NY Times.  Luke Froeb beat me to the punch of this one and has already got a post up, but this is too good not to share.  The article is on book sales and book culture in Germany, the latter of which is:  sustained by an age-old practice requiring all bookstores, ... Economic Illiteracy of the Week Award Goes To …

Lysine Cartel Video Available from DOJ

Todd Zywicki recommends Kurt Eichenwald’s The Informant, the fascinating story of the prosecution of the Archer Daniels Midland lysine cartel in the 1990s, and asks whether the famous DOJ videotapes and transcripts of cartel meetings are available online.  I’m not sure if they are online, but the DOJ does make the tapes and transcripts available free ... Lysine Cartel Video Available from DOJ

Event Studies, Fischel, Bradley, and John Armstrong

I have long held reservations about corporate governance research that hinges on event studies.  (An event study is “an analysis of whether there was a statistically significant reaction in financial markets to past occurrences of a given type of event that is hypothesized to affect public firms’ market values.†An example of the sort of ... Event Studies, Fischel, Bradley, and John Armstrong

Bootleggers and Baptists, Madison Style

Last Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral argument on whether to reinstate an antitrust lawsuit against taverns around the University of Wisconsin (story here). In 2002, the taverns agreed to eliminate drink specials after 8:00 PM on Fridays and Saturdays. A group of students filed a class action lawsuit against the taverns for injunctive ... Bootleggers and Baptists, Madison Style

Hazlett on Property Rights and Innovation

My colleague Tom Hazlett has a characteristically insightful essay in the Financial Times this week entitled “How the Walled Garden Promotes Innovation.” In response to critics that argue that “only a device that is optimised for any application and capable of accessing any network is efficient,” Hazlett offers Apple and DoCoMo as examples of how ... Hazlett on Property Rights and Innovation

Edwards, Antitrust, and the Return of Von's Grocery?

AAI continues its series of antitrust policy statements from presidential candidates with a submission from John Edwards. Again, I’m very pleased that the AAI was successful in getting this series of submissions together and inducing candidates to share their thoughts on antitrust policy. So what does Edwards have to say? Edwards’ statement has in common ... Edwards, Antitrust, and the Return of Von's Grocery?