Economics at the FTC
Economics at the FTC: Drug and PBM Mergers and Drip Pricing, Howard A. Shelanski, Joseph Farrell, Daniel Hanner, Christopher J. Metcalf, Mary W. Sullivan and Brett W. Wendling (December 2012)
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 two recent mergers that involved Rx drugs: First, we describe key elements of the inquiry into the Express Scripts (ESI)/Medco transaction in the pharmacy benefit management (PBM) 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.
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Economics at the FTC: Hospital Mergers, Authorized Generic Drugs, and Consumer Credit Markets Joseph Farrell, David Balan, Keith Brand and Brett Wendling (October 2011)
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 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.
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Economics at the FTC: Mergers, Dominant-Firm Conduct, and Consumer Behavior Joseph Farrell, Janis K. Pappalardo and Howard Shelanski (October 2010)
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.
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Economics at the FTC: Retrospective Merger Analysis with a Focus on Hospitals Joseph Farrell, Paul A. Pautler and Michael G. Vita (October 2009)
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 postmerger 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.
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Economics at the FTC: The Google-DoubleClick Merger, Resale Price Maintenance, Mortgage Disclosures, and Credit Scoring in Auto Insurance Micheal R. Baye, Matias Barenstein, Debra J. Holt, Pauline M. Ippolito, James M. Lacko, Jesse B. Leary, Janis K. Pappalardo, Paul A. Pautler and Michael G. Vita (September 2008)
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.
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Economics at the FTC: Pharmaceutical Patent Dispute Settlements and Behavioral Economics Michael A. Salinger, Pauline M. Ippolito and Joel L. Schrag (September 2007)
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 two issues, one from each of the agency’s missions. First, we focus on intellectual property issues in pharmaceuticals. Specifically, we discuss the principal rationale for antitrust concerns about certain patent dispute settlements in the ethical drug industry. Then, we discuss consumer economics, our recent behavioral economics conference, and how behavioral economics influences our thinking about consumer policy.
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Economics at the FTC: Data Intensive Mergers and Policy R&D Michael A. Salinger, Keith B. Anderson, Christopher J. Garmon, David R. Schmidt and John M. Yun (December 2006)
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”.
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Economics at the FTC: Cases and Research, with a Focus on Petroleum Luke M. Froeb, James C. Cooper, Mark W. Frankena, Paul A. Pautler and Louis Silvia (2005)
Economics at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) covers both the antitrust and consumer protection missions. In this year’s essay, we focus mainly on the competition-side of the agency. Drawing on a wealth of recent research, we provide descriptive and analytical information about the petroleum industry. Mergers, as always, were a major preoccupation of the FTC, and we discuss a few oil industry mergers as well as one leading litigated case – Arch Coal’s acquisition of Triton Coal. Finally, we review the empirical literature on the effects of vertical restraints, noting that the literature supporting an animus toward such restraints is surprisingly weak.
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Economics Research at the FTC: Information, Retrospectives, and Retailing Luke Froeb, Daniel Hosken and Janis Pappalardo (December 2004)
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 FTC’s Bureau of Economics that addresses these three areas. We argue that such research is well worth the agency’s relatively small resource investment because it demonstrably contributes to more thoughtful policy analysis and better policy outcomes.
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Empirical Analyses of Potential Competitive Effects of a Horizontal Merger: The FTC's Cruise Ships Mergers Investigation Mary T. Coleman, David W. Meyer, and David T. Scheffman (September 2003)
This paper highlights some of the staff analyses on the Royal Caribbean/Princess/Carnival investigations.
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Current Economic Issues at the FTC David T. Scheffman and Mary T. Coleman (December 2002)
This paper reviewed economic issues at the FTC in 2002.
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