Showing results for: “price gouging”
Please Stop Calling RPM Price-Fixing, Part 3
The next installment in a seemingly never-ending series (see here for earlier offenders). This time, its the California Attorney General Kamala Harris in a press release announcing a settlement with Bioelements, Inc., a Colorado-based company which sells skin care products in salons and online. The relevant allegation, from the Complaint (Para. 10) is the following: ... Please Stop Calling RPM Price-Fixing, Part 3
Lawsuit loans
Last week I discussed my new paper with Kobayashi, Law’s Information Revolution, which discusses how law’s traditional business of lawyers conveying legal expertise via advice to individual clients “is being challenged by the sale of legal information to impersonal product and capital markets.” Today’s NYT discusses an aspect of this market — advancing money to ... Lawsuit loans
Planet Money on Kittens, Keynes, and the Stock Market
Prompted by this post at Cafe Hayek, I recently participated in a web experiment sponsored by NPR’s Planet Money. I was asked to watch three short animal videos and vote for the animal I found cutest. The videos were all pretty cute. One featured a polar bear cub sliding along the ice with its mother. Another featured a loris ... Planet Money on Kittens, Keynes, and the Stock Market
The FTC and Debarment as an Antitrust Sanction
As a result of the FTC’s “Operation Short Change,” a number of firms and individuals have settled claims that they swindled millions from consumers by making unauthorized charges and debits to their bank accounts. The FTC press release highlights that, in addition to a $2.08 million fine (judgment suspended due to bankruptcy filing), the FTC ... The FTC and Debarment as an Antitrust Sanction
Evidence of the SOX effect on IPOs
Last week I noted that Facebook’s big private sale to Goldman was a symptom of how higher disclosure costs have helped make private firms reluctant to take the once-expected step of going public: “[I]t seems the increased costs of being public have helped exclude ordinary people from the ability to own the stars of the ... Evidence of the SOX effect on IPOs
Some Myths About Insider Trading
Henry G. Manne is Dean Emeritus of the George Mason University School of Law and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Ave Maria School of Law. The SEC is at it again, scandal mongering insider trading. As usual this is the “biggest insider trading case yet,” as if they were trying for some Guinness record. Since ... Some Myths About Insider Trading
R.I.P. Alfred Kahn (1917-2010)
A remembrance from David Henderson,and Kahn’s entry in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics on Airline Deregulation. An excerpt from the WSJ/ AP obituary: A leading scholar on public-utility deregulation, Mr. Kahn led the move to deregulate U.S. airlines as chief of the now-defunct Civil Aeronautics Board in 1977-78. The board had to give its approval ... R.I.P. Alfred Kahn (1917-2010)
Abercrombie goes to Ohio
Steve Davidoff has the story, and it’s an interesting exercise in corporate contracting complicated by jurisdictional choice. Abercrombie’s proposed reincorporation is essentially a takeover defense. Unlike Delaware, Abercrombie’s current state of incorporation, Ohio Has a business combination statute that’s triggered by a 10% acquisition rather than 15% as in Delaware. Has a control share acquisition ... Abercrombie goes to Ohio
Against Consumer Choice as an Antitrust Standard (Some Preliminary Thoughts)
The “consumer choice” approach to antitrust is increasingly discussed in a variety of settings, and endorsed by regulators and in scholarship, especially but not exclusively in the Section 5 context. The fundamental idea is that the “conventional” efficiency approach embedded in the total and/or consumer welfare standards is too cramped and does not measure the ... Against Consumer Choice as an Antitrust Standard (Some Preliminary Thoughts)
The obscure efficiency of empty voting
A few years ago a new scandal emerged on the corporate scene, prompted by Hu & Black’s work on so-called “empty voting.” The supposed problem is that a hedge fund can separate voting and economic rights by borrowing, hedging or short-term trading. The trader can vote shares in a company in which he owns a ... The obscure efficiency of empty voting
Nocera on the uncorporation and the financial crisis
The Glom’s having a book club on McLean & Nocera’s All the Devils Are Here. I haven’t read the book (it takes a lot to get me to read a book by business journalists). But I have read David Zaring’s interview with his “favorite Times columnist. One of the questions and answers naturally piqued my ... Nocera on the uncorporation and the financial crisis
Why can’t we have a better press corps?: WaPo Google antitrust edition
Steven Pearlstein at the Washington Post asks if it’s “Time to loosen Google’s grip.” The article is an analytical mess. Pearlstein is often a decent business reporter–I’m not sure what went wrong here, but this is a pretty shoddy piece of antitrust journalism. For the most part, the article is a series of tired claims ... Why can’t we have a better press corps?: WaPo Google antitrust edition
