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Antitrust and Trade Regulation

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2017

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Irma Price Gouging Highlights Sad Truth: Consumer Fleecing Is The New Normal, Ramsi Woodcock Sep 2017

Irma Price Gouging Highlights Sad Truth: Consumer Fleecing Is The New Normal, Ramsi Woodcock

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By bringing desperation to so many, Hurricane Irma is revealing a sad fact about many American companies, and not just airlines: that they have come in recent years to embrace taking advantage of desperate consumers as a central part of their business models.

The practice, called dynamic pricing, is intended to ration scarce goods and services, yet, as I show in a recent paper, it primarily harms consumers by making it easier for companies to fleece them.


Amazon's Whole Foods Deal Could Still Be Reversed Thanks To Forgotten Antitrust Case, Ramsi Woodcock Aug 2017

Amazon's Whole Foods Deal Could Still Be Reversed Thanks To Forgotten Antitrust Case, Ramsi Woodcock

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Amazon formally took ownership of Whole Foods this week after the Federal Trade Commission signaled on August 23 that it wouldn’t stop the deal.

The online retailer isn’t wasting any time remaking the high-end grocery chain in its low-price image. Its first act involved cutting prices on dozens of items, from avocados to tilapia. But that is not what is sending shivers down the aisles of rival food retailers like Walmart, which now controls 20 percent of the grocery market by pursuing just such a low-price strategy.

The reason, which the FTC ignored in providing its imprimatur, is that Amazon …


Eu's Antitrust 'War' On Google And Facebook Uses Abandoned American Playbook, Ramsi Woodcock Jul 2017

Eu's Antitrust 'War' On Google And Facebook Uses Abandoned American Playbook, Ramsi Woodcock

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On June 27, the European Union imposed a €2.4 billion (US$2.75 billion) fine on Google for giving favorable treatment in its search engine results to its own comparison shopping service. And Germany’s antitrust enforcer is investigating Facebook for asking users to sign away control over personal information.

In contrast, American antitrust enforcers have shown little interest in these companies. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) did open an investigation into whether Google has a search bias, but closed it in 2013, despite recognizing that it “may have had the effect of harming individual competitors.”

Anti-Americanism, however, does not explain these starkly …