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The Coca-Cola Company and Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC) have been accused of fraudulent product labeling in Nigeria by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC). The investigation, which began in June 2019, found that Coca-Cola changed the formulation of its Coke brand without informing consumers. The companies marketed the Coca-Cola 'Original Taste, Less Sugar' as the same as its 'Original Taste' variant, which was found to be untrue. The FCCPC issued its final order on the two companies on July 29, 2024, after finding them both to continue violating laws through misleading labeling. [Extracted from the article]

Austria's Federal Competition Authority (BWB) has called for Heineken-owned Brau Union to be fined for breaking anti-trust rules. The competition watchdog has accused Brau Union of abusing its dominant market position and engaging in anti-competitive agreements in Austria's wholesale trade. BWB alleges that Brau Union made exclusive purchasing obligations with buyers, non-compete agreements with competitors, and exchanged competitively sensitive data with rivals. The authority has requested that the Cartel Court of Austria impose a fine on Brau Union and cease ongoing infringements. Heineken has stated that it is aware of the legal proceedings and is cooperating with the authorities. [Extracted from the article]

Mondelez International, the owner of brands such as Oreo and Cadbury, has been fined €338m ($366.5m) by the European Commission for violating competition regulations. The violations, which occurred between 2006 and 2020, involved hindering cross-border trade of chocolates, biscuits, and coffee products between EU member states. The European Commission found that Mondelez engaged in anti-competitive agreements and practices, including limiting territories and customers for wholesalers and preventing distributors from replying to sale requests from customers in other member states. Mondelez acknowledged the settlement but stated that the incidents were historical and had been remedied. [Extracted from the article]

Rising concentration across many developed economies has seen issues of competition and market power take centre stage. This report contributes to that debate by examining the role of technology in altering the balance of competition between large and small firms. It focuses on digitalisation as a potential driver of enhanced benefits to scale, by examining the evolution of mark-ups and multifactor productivity (MFP) across firms of different sizes. It finds that size is positively related to mark-ups and that this relationship has strengthened over time. This trend has been accompanied by an increase in the relative productivity advantage of larger firms and both changes are more pronounced in digitalintensive sectors, suggesting that digitalisation may be an underlying driver. The differential impact of digital technologies on larger and smaller firms suggests that current trends towards greater concentration, falling business dynamism, higher mark-ups and greater divergence in productivity may continue, requiring policy makers to consider appropriate responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review macroeconomic performance over the period since the Global Financial Crisis and the challenges in the pursuit of the Federal Reserve's dual mandate. We characterize the use of forward guidance and balance sheet policies after the federal funds rate reached the effective lower bound. We also review the evidence on the efficacy of these tools and consider whether policymakers might have used them more forcefully. Finally, we examine the post-crisis experience of other major central banks with these policy tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We empirically document that serial uncertainty shocks are (1) common in the data and (2) have an increasingly stronger impact on the macroeconomy. In other words, a series of bad (positive) uncertainty shocks exacerbates the economic decline significantly. From a theoretical perspective, these findings are puzzling: existing benchmark models do not deliver the observed amplifica- tion. We show analytically that a state dependent precautionary motive with respect to uncertainty shocks is required. Our derivations suggest that the state dependent precautionary motive only shows up at fourth order approximations or higher. Fundamentally, in DSGE models solved with perturbations, agents have always possessed a state dependent precautionary motive but typical solu- tion methods were hiding this fact. Future studies need to consider solving the model via fourth (or higher) order perturbation in order to avoid understating the effect of uncertainty shocks that occur in succession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We document wide dispersion in the mortgage rates that households pay on identical loans, and show that borrowers' financial sophistication is an important determinant of the rates ob- tained. We estimate a gap between the 10th and 90th percentile mortgage rate that borrowers with the same characteristics obtain for identical loans, in the same market, on the same day, of 54 basis points|equivalent to about $6,500 in upfront costs (points) for the average loan. Time-invariant lender attributes explain little of this rate dispersion, and considerable disper- sion remains even within loan officer. Comparing the rates borrowers obtain to the real-time distribution of rates that lenders could offer for the same loan and borrower type, we find that borrowers who are likely to be the least financially savvy tend to substantially overpay relative to the rates available in the market. In the time series, the average overpayment decreases when overall market interest rates rise, suggesting that a rising level of borrowing costs encourages more search and negotiation. Furthermore, new survey data provide direct evidence that finan- cial knowledge and shopping both affect the mortgage rates borrowers get, and that shopping activity increases with the level of market rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary care physicians (PCPs) provide more specialty procedures in less-urban areas, where specialists are fewer. Using a structural random-coefficient model and the demographic and time variation in the data, this paper shows that changes in policy-set reimbursements lead to a reallocation of the suddenly-more-remunerative procedures away from specialists and toward PCPs, and this effect is stronger, the more rural an area is. A reimbursement-unit increase for a given procedure leads to outside-metro PCPs gaining 7-15% market share more than metro PCPs in that procedure, at the expense of specialists. Small metropolitan areas and very rural areas are the most affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use an overlapping-generations model to explore the implications of mortality during pandemics for the economy's productive capacity. Under current epidemiological projections for the progression of COVID-19, our model suggests that mortality will have, in itself, at most small effects on output and factor prices. The reason is that projected mortality is small in proportion to the population and skewed toward individuals who are retired from the labor force. That said, we show that if the spread of COVID-19 is not contained, or if the ongoing pandemic were to follow a mortality pattern similar to the 1918-1920 Great Influenza pandemic, then the effects on the productive capacity would be economically significant and persist for decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the structural stability of Gaussian shadow rate term structure models of Treasury yields over a sample that includes the period from 2008 onwards during which the U.S. policy rate was at its effective lower bound. After a conceptual dis- cussion of several potential sources of a structural break in the context of the shadow rate model, we document various pieces of evidence for structural instability based on predictive tests and Lagrange multiplier tests, as well as with separate estimations of the pre-ELB and post-ELB subsamples. In order to overcome the difficulties associated with the latent-factor nature of the model in testing for a structural break, we focus on objects that can be given intuitive interpretation, such as principal components, or that are constructed to be invariant to factor rotations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the origins and development of the federal funds market from its inception in the 1920s to the early 1950s. We present a newly digitized daily data series on the federal funds rate from April 1928 through June 1954. We compare the behavior of the funds rate with other money market interest rates and the Federal Reserve discount rate. Our federal funds rate series will enhance the ability of researchers to study an eventful period in U.S. financial history and to better understand how monetary policy was transmitted to banking and financial markets. For the 1920s and 1930s, our series is the best available measure of the overnight risk-free interest rate, better than the call money rate which many studies have used for that purpose. For the 1940s-1950s, our series provides new information about the transition away from wartime interest-rate pegs culminating in the 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the short-run effects of federal education expenditures on local income. We exploit city-level variation in exposure to national changes in the $30-billion Federal Pell Grant Program, which is the largest program to help low-income students attend college in the U.S., to calculate fiscal multipliers of education expenditures. An increase in Pell grants by 1 percent of a city's income raises local income by 2.4 percent over the next two years. This multiplier effect is larger than estimates for military spending (1.5 on average). Multipliers are higher when grants are awarded to students at non-profit colleges, as for-profit colleges absorb most of the grant increases with raises in tuition. Multipliers are also higher during recessions than in expansions: Pell grants can be an effective tool for countercyclical policy that adds to already established benefits, such as, increasing the affordability of college and fostering longrun economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last four decades, the U.S. economy has experienced a few secular trends, each of which may be considered undesirable in some aspects: declining labor share; rising profit share; rising income and wealth inequalities; and rising household sector leverage, and associated financial instability. We develop a real business cycle model and show that the rise of market power of the firms in both product and labor markets over the last four decades can generate all of these secular trends. We derive macroprudential policy implications for financial stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging labor economics literature studies the consequences of firms exercising market power in local labor markets. These monopsony models have implications for trends in earnings inequality. The extent of this market power is likely to vary across local labor markets. In choosing what market to live and work in, workers trade off wages, rents and local amenities. Building on the Rosen/Roback spatial equilibrium model, we investigate how the existence of local monopsony power affects the cross-sectional spatial distribution of wages and rents across cities. We find an employment-weighted elasticity of land prices to concentration of –0.034—similar to Rinz (2018)’s reported elasticity of compensation to concentration. This finding has implications for who bears the economic incidence of labor market power. We present two extensions of the model focusing on the role of migration costs and worker skill heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. approved the recommendation from the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Trade of Industry (DTI), according to Executive Order 39 (EO 39). Keywords: Bakery and Cereal; News EN Bakery and Cereal News N.PAG N.PAG 1 09/06/23 20230901 NES 230901 The president of the Philippines has approved plans to impose mandated price ceilings on domestic rice to tackle food security and inflation. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the evolution of firm mark-ups across 26 countries for the period 2001-14. It also discusses and investigates empirically how this can be related to the degree of digital transformation in sectors. Four main facts emerge: i) mark-ups are increasing over the period, on average across country; ii) this result is driven by firms at the top of the mark-up distribution, while the bottom half of the distribution exhibits a flat trend over time; (iii) mark-ups are higher in digital-intensive sectors than in less-digitally intensive sectors; (iv) mark-up differentials between digitally-intensive and less-digitallyintensive sectors have increased significantly over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Study of the impact of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on productivity and market power has been complicated by the difficulty of separating these two effects. We use newly-developed techniques to separately estimate productivity and markups across a wide range of industries using detailed plant-level data. Employing a difference-in-differences framework, we find that M&As are associated with increases in average markups, but find little evidence for effects on plantlevel productivity. We also examine whether M&As increase efficiency through reallocation of production to more efficient plants or through reductions in administrative operations, but again find little evidence for these channels, on average. The results are robust to a range of approaches to address the endogeneity of firms' merger decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the New York Public Service Commission's (PSC) Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) Track One regulatory framework, which restricts electric utilities's ownership of distributed energy resources (DERs) to mitigate market power abuse, issued on February 26, 2015. The PSC recommends limiting utilities' participation in DER markets to support third-party development of grid technologies. Also outlined are the three PSC-specified situations of utility ownership exemption.

The paper studies equilibrium pricing in a product market for an indivisible good where buyers search for sellers. Buyers search sequentially for sellers but do not meet every seller with the same probability. Speci?cally, a fraction of the buyers? meetings lead to one particular large seller, while the remaining meetings lead to one of a continuum of small sellers. In this environment, the small sellers would like to set a price that makes the buyers indi¤erent between purchasing the good and searching for another seller. The large seller would like to price the small sellers out of the market by posting a price that is low enough to induce buyers not to purchase from the small sellers. These incentives give rise to a game of cat and mouse, whose only equilibrium involves mixed strategies for both the large and the small sellers. The fact that the small sellers play mixed strategies implies that there is price dispersion. The fact that the large seller plays mixed strategies implies that prices and allocations vary over time. We show that the fraction of the gains from trade accruing to the buyers is positive and nonmonotonic in the degree of market power of the large seller. As long as the large seller has some positive but incomplete market power, the fraction of the gains from trade accruing to the buyers depends in a natural way on the extent of search frictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the Competition Bill of Hong Kong, China which was introduced to the Legislative Council in July 2010. The legislation prohibits anti-competitive practices in business agreements, decisions and concerted practices as well as abuse of market power in a market. The bill calls for a Competition Commission which investigates and prosecutes offenders and a Competition Tribunal to hear private cases. Focus is given on monopolies, mergers and price controls.

The article presents a case study regarding the pharmaceutical market of central nervous system (CNS). It examines the drug classes such as antipsychotics, antidepressants and anticonvulsants, in the U.S., Japan, German, Italy, France, Spain and Great Britain. It also discusses the accounting and revenues of pharmaceutical markets from 2004 to 2006.

The article focuses on the trends in global agricultural trade and its impact on the competitive farmers and exporters. It says that inequality in market power makes global buyers, such as retailers and branded manufacturers, set and enforce the terms of which upstream suppliers and producers participate in the trade. It adds that combination of rapid growth in stringent and food standards raises market entry barriers resulting to a better resourced farm and marginalization of smaller producers.

Competition among private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans is seen by some as leading to lower premiums and expanded benefits. But how much competition exists in MA markets? Using a standard measure of market competition, our analysis finds that 97 percent of markets in U.S. counties are highly concentrated and therefore lacking in significant MA plan competition. Competition is considerably lower in rural counties than in urban ones. Even among the 100 counties with the greatest numbers of Medicare beneficiaries, 81 percent do not have competitive MA markets. Market power is concentrated among three nationwide insurance organizations in nearly two-thirds of those 100 counties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out of which, order of Rs 1,416 crore received from international markets in the power transmission business [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out of which, order of Rs 1,416 crore received from international markets in the power transmission business [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tata Consultancy Services has informed that it enclosed press release titled 'Aadhar Housing Finance Pursues Market Expansion Powered by the TCS Lending and Securitization Platform'.The above information is a part of company's filings submitted to BSE. [Extracted from the article]

In coming to its decision, the Turkish Competition Authority concluded Unilever offered illegal discounts on ice creams through local resellers, thereby restricting competition and leading to abuse of its dominant status in the market. Keywords: Unilever EN Unilever N.PAG N.PAG 1 04/08/21 20210323 NES 210323 Unilever's business unit in Turkey has been fined TRY480m (US$61.3m) by the country's competition authority after ruling the consumer-goods giant abused its dominant position in ice cream to the detriment of local producers. [Extracted from the article]

The author discusses the implications of combination of the efficiency wage principle and the search and matching setup. Topics he discussed include the recruitment probability depicted by the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides (DMP) class of unemployment models, factors affecting employment including competition, market power, and discount rates, and the prevention of shirking in the efficiency-wage models.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) jointly enforce antitrust laws that cover mergers and acquisitions of large companies. Initially, firms seeking a merger notify the agencies of their intent and provide information on their products and industries. Consumers, competitors, and other interested parties may also notify the enforcement agencies of their concerns. If the enforcement agencies determine a full review is warranted, they acquire more detailed information from the merging firms. Regulatory agencies focus on several economic criteria to evaluate a proposed merger. First, they define the market according to likely substitution patterns by consumers and calculate the industry concentration. A merger is less likely to be approved if it would result in significant and non-transitory price changes (i.e. market power). Even if the merger would result in market power, the merger may be approved if the market is contestable, that is, if new firms could and likely would enter and compete. Cognizable efficiency, meaning an efficiency that is neither vague nor speculative, is another factor that could allow firms to merge even if market power results. If a firm or division would likely fail anyway, the agencies may permit the merger. In summation, the antitrust enforcement agencies balance likely anticompetitive costs of the proposed merger against likely efficiency gains. This report will be updated as conditions warrant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SaheliWorld.org reflects company's sole aim of empowering its SHGs and farmers to be financially independent and empower them for life [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian Energy Exchange has informed that it has enclosed a Media Release on 3rd June 2020 regarding "Power Market Update for May 2020". The above information will also be made available on the website of the Company: www.iexindia.comThe above information is a part of company's filings submitted to BSE. [Extracted from the article]

The real time market is an endeavor by the regulator, CERC, to make the power market dynamic by enabling trade in electricity through half-hourly auctions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The real time market is an endeavor by the regulator, CERC, to make the power market dynamic by enabling trade in electricity through half-hourly auctions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CCI has slapped a penalty on company for abusing its dominant position with respect to supply of a certain staple fibre to spinners [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study of British polyurethanes manufacturer ICI Polyurethanes with regards to its ECO-Binding Technology which converts agricultural waste-by-products to high value materials. It explores ICI's approach to leadership in the agricultural by-products industry which consists of seven steps including consultation and relationship selling. It also tackles the challenges that ICI encountered in developing the ECO-Binding Technology.

The country has the scope of exporting 75,000 MW of hydro-generated power to resource-deficient neighbouring countries [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The penalty has been imposed for abusing its dominant market position by imposing 'unfair' and 'discriminatory' conditions on home buyers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]