Showing archive for: “Payments & Payment Networks”
Increased e-cigarette regulation increases barriers to health
The Food and Drug Administration has spoken, and its words have, once again, ruffled many feathers. Coinciding with the deadline for companies to lay out their plans to prevent youth access to e-cigarettes, the agency has announced new regulatory strategies that are sure to not only make it more difficult for young people to access ... Increased e-cigarette regulation increases barriers to health
Telemarketing, Technology, and Why the Telephone Sucks (and how to fix it)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that unwanted telephone calls are among the most reviled annoyances known to man. But this does not mean that laws intended to prohibit these calls are themselves necessarily good. Indeed, in one sense we know intuitively that they are not good. These laws have proven wholly ineffective at curtailing ... Telemarketing, Technology, and Why the Telephone Sucks (and how to fix it)
Amazon/Whole Foods: What Me Worry?
Brandeis is back, with today’s neo-Brandeisians reflexively opposing virtually all mergers involving large firms. For them, industry concentration has grown to crisis proportions and breaking up big companies should be the animating goal not just of antitrust policy but of U.S. economic policy generally. The key to understanding the neo-Brandeisian opposition to the Whole Foods/Amazon mergers is that it has nothing to do with consumer welfare, and everything to do with a large firm animus. Sabeel Rahman, a Roosevelt Institute scholar, concedes that big firms give us higher productivity, and hence lower prices, but he dismisses the value of that. He writes, “If consumer prices are our only concern, it is hard to see how Amazon, Comcast, and companies such as Uber need regulation.” And this gets to the key point regarding most of the opposition to the merger: it had nothing to do with concerns about monopolistic effects on economic efficiency or consumer prices. It had everything to do with opposition to big firm for the sole reason that they are big.
A big year for business and economics in the courts, even if we’re not talking about Janus
This has been a big year for business in the courts. A U.S. district court approved the AT&T-Time Warner merger, the Supreme Court upheld Amex’s agreements with merchants, and a circuit court pushed back on the Federal Trade Commission’s vague and heavy handed policing of companies’ consumer data safeguards. These three decisions mark a new ... A big year for business and economics in the courts, even if we’re not talking about Janus
Dear Antitrusters: Bias Is Ubiquitous. Stick to the Merits.
A recent tweet by Lina Khan, discussing yesterday’s American Express decision, exemplifies an unfortunate trend in contemporary antitrust discourse. Khan wrote: The economists cited by the Second Circuit (whose opinion SCOTUS affirms) for the analysis of ‘two-sided’ [markets] all had financial links to the credit card sector, as we point out in FN 4 [link ... Dear Antitrusters: Bias Is Ubiquitous. Stick to the Merits.
New Report: Canadian Interchange Fee Caps Would Hurt Consumers
Canada’s large merchants have called on the government to impose price controls on interchange fees, claiming this would benefit not only merchants but also consumers. But experience elsewhere contradicts this claim. In a recently released Macdonald Laurier Institute report, Julian Morris, Geoffrey A. Manne, Ian Lee, and Todd J. Zywicki detail how price controls on ... New Report: Canadian Interchange Fee Caps Would Hurt Consumers
IMG-Learfield: An antitrust reality check on two-sided market mergers
Yesterday Learfield and IMG College inked their recently announced merger. Since the negotiations were made public several weeks ago, the deal has garnered some wild speculation and potentially negative attention. Now that the merger has been announced, it’s bound to attract even more attention and conjecture. On the field of competition, however, the market realities ... IMG-Learfield: An antitrust reality check on two-sided market mergers
When Should the Government Provide Public Goods?
My new book, How to Regulate: A Guide for Policymakers, will be published in a few weeks. A while back, I promised a series of posts on the book’s key chapters. I posted an overview of the book and a description of the book’s chapter on externalities. I then got busy on another writing project ... When Should the Government Provide Public Goods?
Congressional Review Act Should Be Used to Strike Down Ill-Advised CFPB Arbitration Rule
On July 10, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced a new rule to ban financial service providers, such as banks or credit card companies, from using mandatory arbitration clauses to deny consumers the opportunity to participate in a class action (“Arbitration Rule”). The Arbitration Rule’s summary explains: First, the final rule prohibits covered providers ... Congressional Review Act Should Be Used to Strike Down Ill-Advised CFPB Arbitration Rule
New ICLE study finds the Durbin Amendment still harms poorer Americans and small businesses
Today, the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) released a study updating our 2014 analysis of the economic effects of the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act. The new paper, Unreasonable and Disproportionate: How the Durbin Amendment Harms Poorer Americans and Small Businesses, by ICLE scholars, Todd J. Zywicki, Geoffrey A. Manne, and Julian ... New ICLE study finds the Durbin Amendment still harms poorer Americans and small businesses
Why the Federal Trade Commission (not the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) Should Oversee Consumer Protection in Financial Markets
On February 28, the Heritage Foundation released Prosperity Unleashed: Smarter Financial Regulation, a Report that lays bare the heavy and unnecessary burdens imposed on our economy by defective financial regulations, and proposed market-oriented regulatory reforms that would benefit American producers, consumers, and the overall economy. In a recent Truth on the Market blog commentary, I ... Why the Federal Trade Commission (not the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) Should Oversee Consumer Protection in Financial Markets
The Supreme Court Should Reassert the Importance of Procedural Gatekeeper Rules to Deter Antitrust Litigation Excesses
Background In addition to reforming substantive antitrust doctrine, the Supreme Court in recent decades succeeded in curbing the unwarranted costs of antitrust litigation by erecting new procedural barriers to highly questionable antitrust suits. It did this principally through three key “gatekeeper” decisions, Monsanto (1984), Matsushita (1986), and Twombly (2007). Prior to those holdings, bare allegations ... The Supreme Court Should Reassert the Importance of Procedural Gatekeeper Rules to Deter Antitrust Litigation Excesses
