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Trade Commission (trade + commission)
Selected AbstractsDEMAND UNCERTAINTY AND RESALE PRICE MAINTENANCECONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 4 2000D FLATH When retailers must commit to shipment quantities prior to resolution of demand uncertainty, manufacturer stipulation of a minimum retail price is likely to be profitable for the manufacturer and not damaging to the retailers. The reason is simple: if demand turns out to be low, the unfettered market-clearing price can lie below the price that maximizes total sales revenue. A minimum retail price that is binding in the low-demand state can thus increase total revenue even though it saddles retailers with unsold merchandise. The ubiquity of full reimbursement for returns in Japan, even though it is in theory merely a second-best way of achieving minimum retail price stipulations, reveals important aspects of manufacturer maintenance of retail prices having to do with enforcement problems, the allocation of risk-bearing, and economic incentives. These aspects of resale price maintenance (RPM) are relevant to the normative evaluation of the special exemptions for RPM that Japan's Fair Trade Commission has long maintained but is now phasing out. [source] Peaceful Intentions: the First British Trade Commission in China, 1833,5HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 180 2000Glenn Melancon This interpretation, resting on heretofore unexamined documents, directly challenges the prevailing interpretations of Anglo-Chinese relations which argue that after 1834 Britain embarked on a new forward policy designed to force the Chinese to expand British trading privileges. Evidence from the private papers of British officials and from unpublished Foreign Office records shows that the government in London resisted demands from British merchants to demand aggressively access to the Chinese market. Instead the Grey ministry sought to create and maintain a passive policy toward China after the abolition of the East India Company's monopoly. [source] Privacy and Commercial Use of Personal Data: Policy Developments in the United StatesJOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2003Priscilla Regan In the online and offline worlds, the value of personal information , especially information about commercial purchases and preferences , has long been recognised. Exchanges and uses of personal information have also long sparked concerns about privacy. Public opinion surveys consistently indicate that overwhelming majorities of the American public are concerned that they have lost all control over information about themselves and do not trust organisations to protect the privacy of their information. Somewhat smaller majorities favour federal legislation to protect privacy. Despite public support for stronger privacy protection, the prevailing policy stance for over thirty years has been one of reluctance to legislate and a preference for self-regulation by business to protect privacy. Although some privacy legislation has been adopted, policy debates about the commercial uses of personal information have been dominated largely by business concerns about intrusive government regulation, free speech and the flow of commercial information, costs, and effectiveness. Public concerns about privacy, reflected in public opinion surveys and voiced by a number of public interest groups, are often discredited because individuals seem to behave as though privacy is not important. Although people express concern about privacy, they routinely disclose personal information because of convenience, discounts and other incentives, or a lack of understanding of the consequences. This disconnect between public opinion and public behaviour has been interpreted to support a self-regulatory approach to privacy protections with emphasis on giving individuals notice and choice about information practices. In theory the self-regulatory approach also entails some enforcement mechanism to ensure that organisations are doing what they claim, and a redress mechanism by which individuals can seek compensation if they are wronged. This article analyses the course of policy formulation over the last twenty years with particular attention on how policymakers and stakeholders have used public opinion about the commercial use of personal information in formulating policy to protect privacy. The article considers policy activities in both Congress and the Federal Trade Commission that have resulted in an emphasis on "notice and consent." The article concludes that both individual behaviour and organisational behaviour are skewed in a privacy invasive direction. People are less likely to make choices to protect their privacy unless these choices are relatively easy, obvious, and low cost. If a privacy protection choice entails additional steps, most rational people will not take those steps. This appears logically to be true and to be supported by behaviour in the physical world. Organisations are unlikely to act unilaterally to make their practices less privacy invasive because such actions will impose costs on them that are not imposed on their competitors. Overall then, the privacy level available is less than what the norms of society and the stated preferences of people require. A consent scheme that is most protective of privacy imposes the largest burden on the individual, as well as costs to the individual, while a consent scheme that is least protective of privacy imposes the least burden on the individual, as well as fewer costs to the individual. Recent experience with privacy notices that resulted from the financial privacy provisions in Gramm-Leach-Bliley supports this conclusion. Finally, the article will consider whether the terrorist attacks of 11 September have changed public opinion about privacy and what the policy implications of any changes in public opinion are likely to be. [source] FTC Goes Wild Over Whole Foods MergerJOURNAL OF CORPORATE ACCOUNTING & FINANCE, Issue 2 2008Robert W. Rouse Despite a credit crunch in 2007, merger and acquisition (M&A) activity has continued at a rapid pace. The two primary regulatory agencies that evaluate proposed mergers,the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC),issued a guidelines commentary in 2006. It gave us vital insight on how the DOJ and FTC evaluate mergers. The authors review the commentary and show how it worked in the case of one recent acquisition,where the FTC and DOJ disagreed. The authors then discuss how companies can avoid the M&A mistakes of the past. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] The consolidation wave in U.S. food retailing: A European perspectiveAGRIBUSINESS : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 4 2001Neil Wrigley This article assesses, from the perspective of a European academic, the intense wave of acquisition and merger driven consolidation that swept through the U.S. food retail industry during the late 1990s. It reviews the characteristics and causes of that consolidation wave, placing emphasis on the regulatory history of the industry, the consequences of its financial reengineering during the 1980s, and the link between Wal-Mart's entry into the industry and the consolidation wave. The article then assesses the extent to which a shift in regulatory policy and practice by the Federal Trade Commission at the very end of the decade may have altered the pattern and scale of consolidation in the industry. Finally, it considers the future landscape of U.S. food retail consolidation, debating the consequences for the consolidation process of the period of FTC regulatory tightening during 1999/2000 and the likely implications of a Bush administration appointee heading the FTC [EconLit Classifications: L810, L190, G340, L400]. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [source] | ||||||||||