Economics at the FTC: Fraud, Mergers and Exclusion

Economists at the Federal Trade Commission engage in economic analysis of a diverse set of behaviors, practices, and policies in support of the agency’s consumer protection and competition missions as demonstrated by the four projects that are the focus of this article. Consumer protection economists provided economic analysis in the first two projects discussed, which both involve fraud. However, one of the projects was an enforcement action, and the other was a pure research project. The final two projects are antitrust matters: a proposed merger of software firms; and a case that was brought to stop anticompetitive exclusionary conduct.