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Abstract: Payments using credit and charge cards amount to about 50% of the US retail market, with main participants Visa, American Express, and MasterCard. Amex collects higher fees from merchants than Visa and MC. Traditionally, all three networks imposed non-discrimination provisions (NDPs) on merchants which did not allow merchants to disclose the fees they paid to the networks or to provide discounts to cardholders of lower fees cards or to impose surcharges on higher fees cards. The United States (DOJ) sued Amex, Visa, and MC demanding the abolition of NDPs. Visa and MC complied, while Amex went to trial. Although Amex lost at the District Court, it won at Appeal and at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled for Amex setting the relevant antitrust market as a single one: the market for transactions. I discuss competition under these conditions.
Nicholas Economides is a Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business of New York University and Founder and Executive Director of the NET Institute, http://www.NETinst.org/ . He is an internationally recognized academic authority on economics of platforms, network economics, antitrust, and public policy. He holds a Ph.D. and a M.A. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a B.Sc. (First Class Honors) in Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics He has advised or is currently advising the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the governments of Canada, Greece, Ireland, New Zealand, and Portugal, the Attorneys General of New York and Texas, major high technology companies, Federal Reserve .
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Time and Place: June 6, 2019, 16:15,
University of Piraeus, 80 Karaoli & Dimitriou Str., Piraeus,
Room: 013 |
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All Finance Seminars
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