Apart from Antitrust laws, there are several other laws that promote fair business practices. The Robinson-Patman Act prohibits price discrimination. This act ...
"Monopolies and Combinations in Restraint of Trade." U.S. Code Collection. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print. 28 Mar. 2014.
The Standard Oil case illustrates how a vertical relationship can create horizontal market power. Granitz and Klein argue that in such a case, the vertical relationship should not be the central aspect of concern for antitrust agencies. It was the explicit horizontal conspiracy by the railroads with the help of Standard that jointly fixed rail rates and railroad market shares. “Such horizontal collusive behavior is clearly anticompetitive, and would be anticompetitive even if there were no vertical connection between Standard and the railroads” (Granitz and Klein 1996, p. 45). They conclude their article by stating that their detailed analysis did not support any new antitrust policy that would condemn a vertical relationship in the absence of a horizontal conspiracy.
Due to increasing consumer resentment towards ever-increasing monopolistic industries in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the government formulated antitrust laws to allow for a more competitive market. The legislations prohibit anticompetitive business practices such as price fixing, bid rigging, monopolization, and tying contracts.
them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism, tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set,
In conclusion, the temptation for a firm to enter into a cartel or collusive agreement may not only be to fuel rising profits and sales. Some organisations may enter into these agreements not with the sole intention of boosting profits, this is clearly seen through the creation of OPEC which aids both consumers and producers development and stability. However seen above by the BA and Virgin Atlantic scandal this is the most common use for this agreement. The negative side of these types of agreements that are purely selfish and only help the producer are clear to see. Furthermore, the reason is clear as to why this agreement broke down, as the key component to any agreement is trusts and this is what Virgin broke, there was no foreseeable way this collusive agreement to continue.
The role of law reform has responded rather effectively to a certain extent in protecting the rights of consumers. This is evident in the legal responses introduced to address issues of credit, marketing innovation and technology. These law amendments has effectively increase the protection of the rights of consumers to a certain extent, however loopholes still exist. Due to the increasing range of goods and services continues to grow and the failure of existing laws, the role of law reform has been significant in protecting the rights of consumers. Consumer laws were created to prevent deceitful activities, or unfair business practices, as well as serving a protection for weaker parties who are unable to protect themselves. However, laws were later reformed to enable customers to transact with confidence and protect suppliers, consumers from inappropriate business conduct and to reflect changed community values and circumstances.
Corporations functioning within the jurisdiction of the Australian Commonwealth are governed and regulated by the provisions of the Corporations Act, 2001. Common law principles developed through judicial
[12] University of Central Florida, Barbara Moore’s Slides, Antitrust and Industrial Policy, 2003?, 15 March 2004, <http://www.bus.ucf.edu/moore/forms/eco2023_b001_ch19.pdf>
Because the field of Business Law is so great, this paper will examine a single aspect of Business Law, that of antitrust action. Specifically, as it is applied to Microsoft, antitrust litigation is raising eyebrows in both the legal and business worlds.
... of remaining fair with a collection of antitrust laws. The laws ensure that there is not monopolization of products, price fixing to destroy competitors and over charging the consumer.
This is the situation which occurs when two or more firms in an industry tend to reduce or change their own prices so that they can stand out in the industry, in return helps them increase their market share and gain more profit,which is then followed by other competitive firms. Firms with fewer financial resources may even be put out of the business. Price fixing plays a major role in a price war. In some industry, state of oligopoly is quite apparent (i.e. only a few sellers operate), this results in forcing small business to walk out of the market. Price wars represent one of the most severe forms of competitive interplay in the market place, causing great losses. Bhattacharya, 1996 and Busse, 2000 have studied that companies suffer losses in terms of margins, consumer equity, and ability to innovate, fall victim to substitutes, and even face bankruptcy. Initially consumers may be benefited from lower prices, may develop unrealistic reference prices and suffer from lower quality products in the long term. Rao et al, 2000 have studied that the battleground for price wars extends far beyond the classic examples involving the airline and energy businesses as price wars are seen to break out in all kinds
A non competition agreement in an employment contract is a contract between the employee and employer that says the employee cannot work for competitors of the employer for a certain amount of time after the employee has left the company. The best way to determine if the courts have something enforceable is with this question, does the “agreement reasonably balance the employer’s legitimate business interests with the employee’s freedom to choose his or her employment” (Fryberger). These agreements are here to protect the employer’s confidential information and most importantly, the entirety of the business. These non competition agreements help keep the employer in business, but there are certain circumstances that the courts will not enforce these agreements, such as if the agreement is too unreasonable and does not allow the individual to make a living, this could mean the duration of time they are restricted for and/or restrictions on where they can’t work in that geographic
The competition and consumer act aims to discourage price discrimination in the business environment if the discrimination could substantially reduce competition. An example of price discrimination would be Apple with the distribution of IPhone 5c around the world, the prices vary from $500-$1,500(local currency). The IPhone 5c is less-profitable for Apple but still the price range has a big gap e.g., in Singapore the iPhone costs $948, but in the UK it costs $529 . There are three types of price discrimination (first degree, second degree and third degree) and they all discriminate differently. The price discrimination in business will increase revenue, they will attract more consumers and will enable companies to stay in business. The consequences for price discrimination is that the manufacture/business will get sued by consumers for price discrimination especially when paying higher prices, decline in consumer surplus, there may be administrative costs of separating the markets etc. However, Price discrimination has a lot of impacts on consumers and business owner 's around the world but most importantly it affects people that have been discriminated over the price for the same