US: FTC announces agenda for final 21st Century hearing

The Federal Trade Commission announced the agenda for the 14th session of its Hearings Initiative. This session, at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska on June 12, 2019, will conclude the FTC’s Hearings on Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century.

The morning session will include a series of roundtable discussions with State Attorneys General on consumer protection and antitrust enforcement and policy issues. Attorneys General Jeff Landry (Louisiana), Doug Peterson (Nebraska), Jason Ravnsborg (South Dakota), and Herbert Slatery III (Tennessee), and senior staff from the Attorney General Offices of Arizona, the District of Columbia, Iowa, Mississippi, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington, will participate.

The first afternoon session will examine legal and economic considerations relevant to optimizing the Commission’s consumer protection remedies.

The second afternoon session will revisit Frank Easterbrook’s seminal article The Limits of Antitrust, 63 Tex. L. Rev. 1 (1984). Panelists will discuss whether and under what conditions error-cost considerations are an appropriate guide for antitrust policy and enforcement, and how and to what degree such considerations should influence the Commission’s case selection and advocacy agenda.