Source: http://yuanyu.idv.tw/category/%E7%B6%93%E6%BF%9F/page/29/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 02:14:01+00:00

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Review of “Lor’s, Inc. v. Broadway-Hale Stores, Inc.(1959)"
With the progress on economics, we could find a lot of judgments, or even the law itself, were based on some erroneous and misguided legal and economic concepts, such as predatory pricing, competition, market definition, cost concept, etc.
Take “Lor’s, Inc. v. Broadway-Hale Stores, Inc. 359 U.S. 207, 79 S. Ct. 705, 3 L.Ed.2d 741 (1959)” as an example.
In this case, the plaintiff, which was an independent electronic products retail store, claimed that manufacturers and distributors of many well-know brands as GE, RCA, Emerson, etc. refused to sell or sold their products at so-called “discriminatory price.” The reason was the manufacturers or distributors of these well-known brands sold their products to the chained stores in lower prices than to them.
The Supreme Court held this common commercial behavior as a violation of Sherman Act. Obviously, the court just showed their lack of cost concept.
All the meaningful costs shall be “opportunity costs.” Thus the costs between selling products to chained stores and to an independent retail store are tremendously different. The factors, like predictable constant purchase, reliable payments, and the vast amount of quantity, make the manufacturers or distributors less cost to sell their products to chained stores. There are some costs existing in setting up and maintaining a transaction channel between two parties. Sometimes the costs are absorbed by the seller, sometimes are paid by the buyers. However, it does exist. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Since the difference of cost structures, discriminatory pricing would be very popular in most businesses.
Formosa Plastic Corporation, a Taiwan company and the largest manufacturer of PVC resins in the world, made their revenue more than 5 billion US dolor last year. They require a substantial deposit and highest purchasing quota to any new customer. The amount of PVC that is exceeded the quota won’t be sold even the buyer is voluntary to pay more.
I also had a similar experience. The company, which I worked for, refused to sell products to a new customer who wanted to buy more than ten machines at one time in the first several deals unless they were willing to pay cash before we deliver.
Because there are some uncertain risks that cost us too much to do business with an unfamiliar new customer. We didn’t know whether the credit of the new customer was good. We didn’t know what the real purpose they had. To sell our products or to try reverse-engineering? That’s a question to us. I believe the situation would be similar to Formosa Plastic Corporation and other companies around the world.
It is the concern of cost, not of “anti-competition,” causes a businessman much prefer to sell his goods to a customer he knows in lower prices or larger volumes, especially in B2B relationships.
This common commercial phenomenon can be explained perfectly by the correct cost concept. Unfortunately, the court in Lor’s case was unable to distinguish the costs on economics form the costs on accounting. No wonder the court came out a decision that sounded so surreal to normal businessmen.
The judges, scholars, and people who believe in the function of antitrust laws are just unable to see the real world clearer.
Why the unemployment still climbs at recovery?
Gary S. Becker, a Nobel Prize laureate, wrote an article — Productivity, Unemployment, and the End of the Recession— on September 9th.
He talked about his op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal (“We’re Not Head for a Depression”) in which he possessed an optimism about the future economy of the United States. Otherwise, he also brought out an interesting point.
Dr. Becker supposes that most pessimism comes from erroneous interpretation of the unemployment.
Some people argue about the decline of unemployment is not satisfying; and some argue that the real unemployment is getting severe. Some other people even claim that we should include the underemployment.
Actually, no matter what number you apply, the growth of unemployment would not turn around so fast.
The total domestic productivity is actually accumulated by countless individual productivity. Dr. Becker noticed that the productivity per person continues growing, no matter how severe the economy is. Therefore, when facing a decrease in total domestic output, say, a recession or a depression, the increasing individual productivity will cause more people lose their jobs (or make them turn to part-time ones). It’s just a simple arithmetic question.
Unless the number of total domestic output passes the prior highest record, we would hardly notice the improvement of the job market.
Conclusively, the economists who only focus on the statistics of unemployment may just make a mistake in the economics logic.
Dr. Becker’s viewpoint is not only interesting but persuasive.
Nonetheless, I wrote an article about the law growth of wages in Taiwan and the U.S. through the “Comparative advantages theorem.” See, “開放大陸勞工來台會降低台灣人薪資水平？.”Considering the social-welfare regulations, unions, and the minimum-wage limitation, the wages in the U.S. and Europe are more difficult to be adjusted in the downturn. This may be why their unemployment situation has been severer than Asian countries.
I have no idea of which factor matterring more. But it’s a question worthy of thinking.
Many people imagine that businessmen could set in a room and come to a conspiracy decision to raise the prices up then increase their profits.
However, it’s really only an imagination.
It’s always not easy to form a cartel or collusive group in any business. There are some obstacles must be overcome with a critical tactic.
1. To form a cartel or a collusive group, the first problem the founder must face is that it’s hard to figure out who are all the possible competitors?
For example, if medical doctors successfully raise their treatment fee as high as they want, then people would turn to get medical advices from their druggists, god, or themselves.
This phenomenon did happen in Taiwan in 1950’s.
2.The second natural obstacle to form a collusive group is that each competitor has their own unique cost curve. And this fact will cause them has different motives to choose to get in or to get out the group.
This critical fact will still impact how successful a collusive group can be after its formation.
3.The third is the difference between the single-quality products and multiple-quality products.
There are only few products in the world can be classified as single-quality products, such as pure gold, silver, aluminum, or other chemical elements.
Even a diamond, usually has four major qualities to form a price. They are size, color, tarnish, and cutting. A consumer see only one price, however, it’s formed by the combination of four measured elements.
The more complexity of a product, the more rent value could be created by differentiating the product. That’s why most business always emphasize how different their products are from other competitors’. That’s also why we have so many brands. It is the most common phenomenon in the real world.
This would not only make people to apply unique way to maximize their interest, but also form different cost structures to every supplier.
That is one reason why we can find very few successful cartels in the real world.
4.Once a collusive group was formed, the member who has a highest marginal cost will has the strongest incentive to violate their agreement.
Because with fixed-price or fixed-quality rule, the biggest beneficiary would be the one who enjoys the lowest marginal and average cost. On the contrary, the one with higher marginal or average cost would eventually figure out that he can maximize his interest by breaching the rule.
5. How to enforce the agreement will be a huge challenge to the one who tries to maintain the collusive group.
There are two major costs to enforce an agreement successfully. One is to detect who violates the rule; and the other one is effective punishment.
M&A might be an effective way to achieve this goal, however, it still cannot prevent the group from potential or new competitors which might be formed by the company seller or your employees. Even there are some contractual ways to deal with these problems, they don’t work as well as lawyers’ imagination.
According to commercial history, the most effective method is to introduce legal power or authorization to prevent possible breaches of members and new entrants, like a license system.
Conclusively, the fundamental problem of most collusive behaviors is not what a cartel intends to do, but the authorization makes them able to achieve their intentions.
Therefore, in the cases we read such as “FTC v. Indiana Federation of Dentists,” Federal Trade Commission v. Superior Court Trial Lawyers Association,” I think Sherman Act and judges both tried to find out the right answer in a wrong place.
On the other hand, there are some superficially collusive behaviors without legal power or authorization, mostly are caused by information cost of measurement or property maintenance cost, for example, “Broadcast Music, Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc.” and “Fashion Originators’ Guild of America v. FTC case.” The courts apparently had different degree of awareness of social cost in these two cases.
Somehow, in “Klor’s, Inc. v. Broadway-Hale Stores, Inc. (1959),” the Federal Supreme Court showed distinguished lack of cost concept. I will talk about it in the next article.

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