Richard Meade writes – In its quest to lower electricity prices for New Zealand households, the Electricity Authority may inadvertently make the situation worse. This week, the authority announced plans to require New Zealand’s “gentailers” – firms that both generate electricity and retail it to consumers – to offer the same supply terms to independent retailers as […]
An attempt to lower NZ electricity prices could end up doing the opposite – here’s why
An attempt to lower NZ electricity prices could end up doing the opposite – here’s why
23 Aug 2025 Leave a comment
in energy economics, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand Tags: competition law
For a de minimus threshold for mergers
16 Aug 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, industrial organisation, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: competition law, merger law enforcement
I’ve spent the last couple of days at the Competition Law and Policy Institute’s annual workshop.Webb-Henderson’s Lucy Wright made a good case for a de minimus threshold for merger controls. Small mergers could have a safe harbour, or mergers in markets of insufficient NZ importance.If we need to set a monetary threshold for a market…
For a de minimus threshold for mergers
Shorting Your Rivals: A Radical Antitrust Remedy
24 Jul 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, financial economics, industrial organisation Tags: competition law, competition law enforcement, mergers
Conventional antitrust enforcement tries to prevent harmful mergers by blocking them but empirical evidence shows that rival stock prices often rise when a merger is blocked—suggesting that many blocked mergers would have increased competition. In other words, we may be stopping the wrong mergers. In a clever proposal, Ayres, Hemphill, and Wickelgren (2024) argue that […]
Shorting Your Rivals: A Radical Antitrust Remedy
Predatory Pricing Is A Foolish Strategy
20 Jun 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economic history, history of economic thought, industrial organisation Tags: competition law
TweetI’m proud to have paired up with the Cato Institute’s Marian Tupy to pen this new piece at National Review on so-called ‘predatory pricing.’ A slice: Competition drives innovation, improves quality, and most importantly, lowers prices for consumers. Yet when foreign companies — particularly Chinese firms — successfully compete on price, accusations of “predatory pricing”…
Predatory Pricing Is A Foolish Strategy
Breaking up is hard to do
07 Apr 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, property rights, Public Choice, survivor principle Tags: competition law
Eric Crampton writes – The pendulum theory of politics suggests that policies often swing from one extreme to another without finding a balanced middle ground. Consider New Zealand’s supermarkets. Current regulations have made it near-impossible for new large-scale grocers to enter the New Zealand market.
Breaking up is hard to do
Stop waiting for a foreign hero: NZ’s supermarket sector needs competition from within
21 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, industrial organisation, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: competition law
Lisa M. Katerina Asher, Catherine Sutton-Brad and Drew Franklin write – New Zealand’s concentrated supermarket sector is back in the spotlight after Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she was open to offering “VIP treatment” to a third international player willing to create competition. However, New Zealanders hoping for a foreign hero to break up the […]
Stop waiting for a foreign hero: NZ’s supermarket sector needs competition from within
The 2023 Merger Guidelines Will Remain: What Does That Mean?
03 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, politics - USA, survivor principle Tags: 2024 presidential election, competition law, merger law enforcement
Under current law, any US companies considering a merger or acquisition that is above $125 million in size must first report it to the government. The most recent data for 2023 says that 1,805 such transactions were reported in 2023, which was a relatively low number for recent years. In 2021 and 2022, for example,…
The 2023 Merger Guidelines Will Remain: What Does That Mean?
When politicians campaign on competition, be very worried
31 Jan 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, Armen Alchian, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, economics of information, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, experimental economics, history of economic thought, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, property rights Tags: competition law
Targeting big existing businesses may be tempting to politicians, but ensuring market openness will do more good Eric Crampton writes – It’s fair to say that economists like competition. It’s also fair to say that when politicians start talking about competition, economists ought to get a little bit nervous.
When politicians campaign on competition, be very worried
Some Simple Economics of the Google Antitrust Case
17 Dec 2024 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economics of information, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, law and economics, politics - USA, Public Choice, survivor principle, theory of the firm Tags: competition law
The case is straightforward: Google pays firms like Apple billions of dollars to make its search engine the default. (N.B. I would rephrase this as Apple charges Google billions of dollars to make its search engine the default–a phrasing which matters if you want to understand what is really going on. But set that aside […]
Some Simple Economics of the Google Antitrust Case
#OTD a monopoly was born!?
15 Dec 2024 Leave a comment
in economic history, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: competition law, creative destruction, merger law enforcement
Bob Ekelund Remembered
23 Nov 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, economics of bureaucracy, economics of information, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, health economics, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, law and economics, market efficiency, Milton Friedman, property rights, Public Choice, public economics, regulation, theory of the firm Tags: competition law, Product safety
TweetHere’s my just-published remembrance, in Public Choice, of my late teacher, dissertation advisor, co-author, and friend, Bob Ekelund. Three slices: The only textbook assigned for the course was Milton Friedman’s Price Theory. From some younger members of Auburn’s economics faculty, I heard a few cocktail-lubricated complaints that core theory courses in a modern economics Ph.D.…
Bob Ekelund Remembered
The Foodstuffs merger is rejected, so the wholesale market remains an oligopsony
10 Oct 2024 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand Tags: competition law
Yesterday we learned the Commerce Commission’s decision on the merger application by Foodstuffs North Island and Foodstuffs South Island (which I posted about last month). As NBR reported yesterday (paywalled, but you can read this briefer New Zealand Herald story instead, or the Commerce Commission’s decision here):Foodstuffs wanted to see the co-ops merged within and…
The Foodstuffs merger is rejected, so the wholesale market remains an oligopsony
Google’s strategy of search engine user lock-in
22 Aug 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, economics of regulation, industrial organisation, politics - USA Tags: competition law
The Financial Times reported earlier this month (paywalled):A US federal judge has ruled that Google spent billions of dollars on exclusive deals to maintain an illegal monopoly on search, in a landmark win for the Department of Justice as it seeks to rein in Big Tech’s market power…The ruling follows a weeks-long trial in which…
Google’s strategy of search engine user lock-in
When life imitates comedy: FTC’s Amazon Flip Flop
26 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, law and economics, Ronald Coase Tags: competition law
Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase once quipped that he left antitrust because “When prices go up, its monopolization, when prices fall it’s predation, and when they stay the same it’s collusion.” As if to illustrate this idea, the FTC’s Chair is reversing herself to bring a case against Amazon. On one hand, booksellers argue that Amazon…
When life imitates comedy: FTC’s Amazon Flip Flop
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments