Economics at the FTC: Mergers,Dominant-Firm Conduct,and Consumer Behavior

Economists at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) pursue the agency’s competition and consumer protection missions. In this year’s essay, in antitrust, we discuss the new Merger Guidelines, three exclusion cases, and R&D issues in the Thoratec/HeartWare merger and the Google/AdMob merger. In consumer protection, we discuss the FTC’s new rule on debt settlement, our efforts to improve disclosures, and our recent work on appliance energy disclosures.     

Economics at the FTC: Hospital Mergers,Authorized Generic Drugs,and Consumer Credit Markets

Economists at the Federal Trade Commission pursue the agency’s competition and consumer protection missions. In this year’s essay, in antitrust, we discuss various aspects of our hospital merger analyses as well as the effects of authorized generic drugs on consumers and competition. In consumer protection, we describe two ongoing studies on the use of credit-based insurance scores to price homeowners insurance, and the accuracy of consumers’ credit reports that are provided by credit bureaus.     

Economics at the FTC: Data Intensive Mergers and Policy R&D

Economics at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) supports both the competition and consumer protection missions of the agency. In this year’s essay we discuss a range of activities focusing on data-intensive antitrust cases in the hospital and consumer products industries. We also discuss our most recent work on gasoline pricing. Policy-focused research and competition advocacy takes center stage as we discuss some health care advocacy work in the administration of pharmaceutical insurance benefits and efforts to understand the real estate business more completely. Finally, we describe our efforts to quantify the extent of “identity theft”.     

Economics at the FTC: The Google-DoubleClick Merger,Resale Price Maintenance,Mortgage Disclosures,and Credit Scoring in Auto Insurance

Economics at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) supports both the competition and consumer protection missions of the agency. In this year’s essay we discuss competition activity with a summary of our work on the Google-DoubleClick merger and recent activity on resale price maintenance, an area in which FTC economists had done significant prior research. On the consumer policy front, we discuss our study of ways to improve mortgage disclosures to facilitate consumer shopping and competition. Finally, we discuss our study of the effects of credit scoring on prices paid for auto insurance with a focus on the effects of scores on different racial and ethnic groups.     

Economics at the FTC: Retrospective Merger Analysis with a Focus on Hospitals

Economists at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) support the agency’s competition and consumer protection missions. In this year’s essay we discuss efforts at the FTC and elsewhere to examine empirically the competitive effects of mergers. This work has ranged from subjective interview-based reports on post-merger behavior to more objective analyses of post-merger performance based on rigorous empirical analysis of prices. In this essay we discuss the merger retrospective literature generally, and focus on the FTC staff’s recent empirical analyses of consummated hospital mergers.     

The Year in Economics at the FCC: A National Plan for Broadband

The past year in economics at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has focused on encouraging the adoption and deployment of high capacity Internet access and the associated networks, commonly termed “broadband.” Our article sketches important economic themes in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan to show how the application of basic principles of regulatory economics takes account of rapid technological change. We discuss natural monopoly regulation, externalities and cross-subsidies, network effects and interconnection, the allocation of scarce inputs, protecting and fostering competitive markets, and consumer protection and transparency as they apply to the development of broadband.     

Economics at the FTC: Drug and PBM Mergers and Drip Pricing

Economists at the Federal Trade Commission pursue the agency??s competition and consumer protection missions. In this year??s essay, in antitrust, we discuss two recent mergers that involved Rx drugs: First, we describe key elements of the inquiry into the Express Scripts/Medco transaction in the pharmacy benefit management industry. Next, we analyze a merger that involved drugs that are used to treat patent ductus arteriosus: a condition that affects premature babies. On the consumer protection side, we discuss a pricing strategy??drip pricing??that involves the release of price information about a multi-part product over time as the consumer goes through the purchase process.     

Economics at the FTC: Physician Acquisitions, Standard Essential Patents, and Accuracy of Credit Reporting

Economists at the Federal Trade Commission pursue the agency’s competition and consumer protection missions. In this year’s essay, with respect to antitrust we discuss the analysis that is used in two areas where the Commission has recently been active: physician combinations and standard essential patents. In consumer protection, we discuss the FTC’s recently released national study of the accuracy of consumer credit reports.     

Economics at the FTC: Quantitative Analyses of Two Chemical Manufacturing Mergers

Review of Industrial Organization - Economists at the Federal Trade Commission support the agency’s competition and consumer protection missions in numerous ways. In this article, we discuss...     

The Year in Economics at the FCC, 2010–11: Protecting Competition Online

The past year in economics at the Federal Communications Commission focused on protecting competition in developing online markets. Our review discusses important economic issues that are raised by the FCC’s Open Internet rulemaking (which is commonly referred to as “net neutrality”) and its review of Comcast’s programming joint venture with General Electric’s NBC Universal affiliate. The Open Internet rule focused on established online markets, while the Comcast/NBCU transaction addressed nascent competition online along with competition in video programming and distribution offline.     

Economics Research at the FTC: Information,Retrospectives, and Retailing

Individual Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cases invariably raise broad questions about consumers, markets, and effective enforcement policy. Recent consumer protection cases raise questions about information regulation. Horizontal merger enforcement has recently focused on retrospective analysis of mergers and the role of the retail sector in predicting the effects of manufacturer mergers. In this paper, we describe research by the FTCs Bureau of Economics that addresses these three areas. We argue that such research is well worth the agencys relatively small resource investment because it demonstrably contributes to more thoughtful policy analysis and better policy outcomes.     

Consumer search and income inequality

Competition and consumer search costs can lead to price dispersion in an oligopoly. IO research has long identified the existence of search costs and estimated their distribution and is now beginning to study which consumers sit where in the distribution. This paper argues for a view of consumer protection and competition policy that considers distributional outcomes along with efficiency. We discuss the evidence on how consumer search varies over the income distribution and provide a literature review that summarizes research on (i) the search-income gradient; (ii) mechanisms for the gradient; and (iii) how search-based price discrimination can give rise to regressive price dispersion. Through our review, we collect evidence from a wide range of industries that shows that low-income consumers tend not to search. We then draw on research from IO, marketing, finance, urban, and behavioral economics for explanations as to why this pattern persists. Finally, we conclude that IO researchers have much to offer in identifying and quantifying the distributional impacts of market power, thereby contributing to current academic and policy debates on efficiency-equity trade-offs in policy design.     

Economics at the FCC, 2011–2012: Spectrum Incentive Auctions, Universal Service and Intercarrier Compensation Reform, and Mergers

The past year in economics at the Federal Communications Commission covered a broad range of topics in telecommunications policy. This paper highlights the economic issues that are addressed in the following key areas: spectrum management, universal service and intercarrier compensation reform, and merger review. In spectrum management, the FCC received congressional authority to implement an ??incentive auction?? to repurpose television broadcasting spectrum into flexible-use licenses that will be suitable for mobile wireless service providers. We discuss some important issues in designing the auction. We next address some aspects of the FCC??s comprehensive reforms of intercarrier compensation, which mainly involves call termination rates, and of universal service. Finally, we discuss the economic analysis of two major mergers: AT&T-T-Mobile, which the FCC staff recommended should be referred to an administrative hearing, and Level 3/Global Crossing, which was cleared with no conditions.     

兼容性经济学研究的发展

兼容性是网络产业和网络经济的重要特征，在网络产业发展和改革的关键时期研究兼容性的相关经济问题很有意义。本文对兼容性相关概念、兼容性实现方式、企业兼容性战略和兼容性的政策意义等问题进行了分析。     

Adoption and policy implications of Japan’s new corporate governance practices after the reform

In this paper we explain the process and policy implications of Japanese firms’ adoption of recently reformed corporate governance practices. We use a selective adaptation framework in doing so. We present some qualitative predictions about the possible outcome of their adoption process. One advantage of our approach is that we can describe various aspects of the evolutionary process of Japan’s corporate governance reform as a system in a consistent manner, rather than as independent pieces. Our predictions provide policy implications and are empirically testable. Japan’s post-bubble corporate governance reform has been extensive and involves the enactment and revisions of many relevant laws and affected institutions. Japan’s aim has been to install US-like practices (the de facto global standard), with these practices replacing the now tarnished bank-centered practices, and to facilitate Japanese industry in regaining global competitiveness. However, we show that Japanese businesses’ adoption of US practices has been selective and efficiency and other policy implications of such behavior are potentially dysfunctional.     

Economics at the FTC: Non-price Merger Effects and Deceptive Automobile Ads

Economists at the Federal Trade Commission analyze a wide range of activities, practices, and policies in support of the agency’s consumer protection and competition missions as demonstrated by the two economic analyses discussed in this article. The first section of this article describes the economic analysis of a proposed merger’s impact on non-price dimensions of competition in the daily fantasy sports market. The second section builds an economic model to quantify the harm to consumers from deceptive advertising in automobile markets.     

管理学方法与经济学方法的借鉴、融合

管理学从其诞生之日就与经济学紧密联系在一起,尤其是在方法上的借鉴、融合至今仍然是管理学者和经济学者关注的焦点。本文结合对管理学理论形成的方法论逻辑的探讨,阐述经济学方法对管理学的影响．并指出经济学方法与企业管理学方法的基本差异和融合趋势。针对当前“创造财富的机制”发生革命性变化的时代变革．提出了企业管理现实对企业管理学和经济学结合发出挑战的重大问题。     

Competition for imperfect consumers

This lecture provides a selective discussion of some issues in the economics of competition for imperfect consumers. Limited consumer awareness – about what deals are on offer, or about the consequences of purchasing decisions – is a central feature of many markets. Consumer imperfection can give rise to market power, but can also co-exist with strong rivalry between firms, and then is more for ‘consumer policy’ than competition policy. Two recent court cases illustrate some of the issues involved. The lecture then reviews a line of theoretical work on competition for imperfect consumers. The analysis highlights some policy tradeoffs, and a key theme is how patterns of consumer awareness matter for patterns of competition among firms.     

A Short Survey of Network Economics

This article surveys a variety of topics that are related to network economics. Topics covered include: consumer demand under network effects, compatibility decisions and standardization, technology advances in network industries, two-sided markets, information networks and intellectual property, and social influence.