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Sep 24, 2024 | 
smh.com.au | Allan Fels
Former chairman Australian Competition and Consumer Commission September 25, 2024 — 5.00am September 25, 2024 — 5.00am, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. If the allegations of dishonesty and illegality against Coles and Woolworths are accepted by the Federal Court, the effects on the supermarkets – and on public policy – will be large.
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Jun 27, 2024 | 
insideretail.com.au | Allan Fels |Rakshnna Pattabiraman |Anil Prabha
Suppliers of food and other products have been complaining for years about their treatment at the hands of Woolworths, Coles and Australia’s other big supermarket chains, although rarely to the supermarkets themselves – perhaps, as suggested in a recent Four Corners program, because they feared retribution.
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Jun 24, 2024 | 
tolerance.ca | Allan Fels
By Allan Fels, Professorial Fellow, The University of Melbourne
The Emerson review could have recommended binding arbitration and giving courts the power to force supermarket chains to divest stores, but what it has recommended will put the big chains on notice. Read complete article© The Conversation
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Jun 24, 2024 | 
theconversation.com | Allan Fels
Suppliers of food and other products have been complaining for years about their treatment at the hands of Woolworths, Coles and Australia’s other big supermarket chains, although rarely to the supermarkets themselves – perhaps, as suggested in a recent Four Corners program, because they feared retribution. The final report of the independent review of the food and grocery code of conduct finds they’ve had reason for complaint, and devotes an entire chapter to the “fear of retribution”.
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Apr 16, 2024 | 
truthonthemarket.com | Eric Fruits |Kay Jebelli |Allan Fels |Chris DeMuth Jr.
In this “Age of the Administrative State,” federal agencies have incredible latitude to impose policies without much direction or input from Congress. President Barack Obama fully pulled off the mask in 2014, when he announced “[w]e are not just going to be waiting for legislation,” declaring “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone.” Subsequent presidents have similarly discovered that they had pens and phones, too. But that’s not how things are supposed to work.
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Apr 16, 2024 | 
truthonthemarket.com | Kay Jebelli |Gregory J. Werden |Brian Albrecht |Allan Fels
It’s easy for politicians to make unrealistic promises. Indeed, without a healthy skepticism on the part of the public, they can grow like weeds. In the world of digital policy, the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) has proven fertile ground for just such promises. We’ve been told that large digital platforms are the source of many economic and social ills, and that handing more discretionary power to the government can solve these problems with no apparent side effects or costs.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
truthonthemarket.com | Gregory J. Werden |Brian Albrecht |Allan Fels |Chris DeMuth Jr.
Through laudable competition on the merits, Google achieved a usage share of nearly 90% in “general search services.” About a decade later, the government alleged that Google had maintained its dominant share through exclusionary practices violating Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The case was tried in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. last fall, and the parties made post-trial filings this year.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
truthonthemarket.com | Brian Albrecht |Allan Fels |Chris DeMuth Jr. |Dirk Auer
The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recent complaint challenging the proposed merger of the supermarkets Kroger Co. and Albertsons Companies Inc. has important implications for antitrust enforcement in labor markets. Central to the FTC’s case is how it chooses to define the relevant markets, and particularly the commission’s focus on unionized grocery workers. The complaint alleges that the combined firm would dominate these markets, substantially lessening competition for unionized labor.
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Apr 12, 2024 | 
truthonthemarket.com | Lazar Radic |Allan Fels |Chris DeMuth Jr. |Dirk Auer
A year after it was created by the Government of India’s Ministry of Corporate Affairs to examine the need for a separate law on competition in digital markets, India’s Committee on Digital Competition Law (CDCL) in February both published its report recommending adoption of such rules and submitted the draft Digital Competition Act (DCA), which is virtually identical to the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).
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Apr 10, 2024 | 
truthonthemarket.com | Allan Fels |Chris DeMuth Jr. |Dirk Auer |Eric Fruits
I did degrees in law and economics at the University of Western Australia and a PhD in economics at Duke University. Then I was a research fellow at the Department of Applied Economics, University of Cambridge, where I was for a few years, where I wrote a book on how prices and wages were regulated in the UK in those years. I returned to Australia and subsequently have divided my time roughly and equally between being an academic and a regulator.
