Showing archive for: “Price Controls & Gouging”
Tesla and the Auto Dealers Lobby
In Continental T.V. v. GTE Sylvania (1977), Justice Powell observed that antitrust law should go easy on manufacturer restraints on dealer resale because manufacturers could always decide to integrate forward into distribution and bypass dealers altogether. As anyone who has followed electric car manufacturer Tesla’s recent travails will know, Justice Powell’s observation is not true ... Tesla and the Auto Dealers Lobby
A “Reasonable Profits Board”? If Only It Were From the Onion…
A Congressional Bill proposing a “Reasonable Profits Board” so that profits on the sale of oil and gas in excess of what is “reasonable” can be subjected to a windfall tax. A brief description: According to the bill, a windfall tax of 50 percent would be applied when the sale of oil or gas leads ... A “Reasonable Profits Board”? If Only It Were From the Onion…
Zywicki on the Unintended Consequences of the Durbin Bank Fees
Here’s Professor Zywicki in the WSJ on the debit card interchange price controls going into effect, and their unintended but entirely predictable consequences: Faced with a dramatic cut in revenues (estimated to be $6.6 billion by Javelin Strategy & Research, a global financial services consultancy), banks have already imposed new monthly maintenance fees—usually from $36 ... Zywicki on the Unintended Consequences of the Durbin Bank Fees
Natural Disasters and Payday Lending
There has been plenty of Hurricane Irene blogging, and some posts linking natural disasters to various aspects of law and policy (see, e.g. my colleague Ilya Somin discussing property rights and falling trees). Often, post-natural disaster economic discussion at TOTM turns to the perverse consequences of price gouging laws. This time around, the damage from ... Natural Disasters and Payday Lending
The Durbin Fee
Given the crucial role debit card “swipe” fees played in causing the recent financial crisis, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin insisted that the Dodd-Frank law (you know, the one that left Fannie and Freddie untouched) impose price controls on debit card transactions. Ben Bernanke, who apparently doesn’t have enough on his plate, was tasked with determining banks’ processing and fraud-related costs ... The Durbin Fee
Politics and Price Gouging
Commissioner Rosch gets off his second shot in against the Department of Justice in just a few weeks in the pages of the Wall Street Journal — this time in a letter to the editor: Obama’s Political ‘Price-Gouging’ If any doubts existed about whether the Justice Department is just “an arm of the administration,” they ... Politics and Price Gouging
Shocked: Gasoline Prices Vary Edition
From the Attorney General’s Memorandum to the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force (HT: Michael Giberson, who is a must read on all issues oil and energy related: Based upon our work and research to date, it is evident that there are regional differences in gasoline prices, as well as differences in the statutory and other ... Shocked: Gasoline Prices Vary Edition
Net neutrality and Trinko
Commentators who see Trinko as an impediment to the claim that antitrust law can take care of harmful platform access problems (and thus that prospective rate regulation (i.e., net neutrality) is not necessary), commit an important error in making their claim–and it is a similar error committed by those who advocate for search neutrality regulation, as ... Net neutrality and Trinko
Dan Crane’s The Institutional Structure of Antitrust Enforcement
Dan Crane’s new book is now available from Oxford University Press (HT: Danny Sokol). Dan has been a repeat visitor to TOTM, is a co-author, and his scholarship on is always insightful. I suspect this book will become a standard reference in the growing antitrust institutions literature. Here is the book description from the OUP ... Dan Crane’s The Institutional Structure of Antitrust Enforcement
David Friedman on Behavioral Economics: Intriguing Research Project, with Reservations
I have long argued that the economic assumption of rationality is useful not because it is a complete and correct description of real world behavior but because it describes that part of behavior that is predictable. If half the time an individual takes the actions that best achieve his goals and half the time he ... David Friedman on Behavioral Economics: Intriguing Research Project, with Reservations
Does the Supreme Court Deem Price Discrimination to be an “Anticompetitive” Effect of Tying?
One of my summer writing projects is a response to Einer Elhauge’s recent, highly acclaimed article, Tying, Bundled Discounts, and the Death of the Single Monopoly Profit Theory. In the article, which appeared in the December 2009 Harvard Law Review, Elhauge defends current tying doctrine, which declares tie-ins to be per se illegal when the ... Does the Supreme Court Deem Price Discrimination to be an “Anticompetitive” Effect of Tying?
The Economics and Regulation of Payment Card Interchange Fees: Paper and Conference
Two related items from ICLE: As regular readers know, interchange fees are a frequent topic of conversation around the blog. Taking the conversation from the ether to the real world, ICLE has funded a white paper and is putting on a conference next week on the topic. The conference, in fact, grows out of the ... The Economics and Regulation of Payment Card Interchange Fees: Paper and Conference
