Edgeworth Insights Archive

On March 1, 2023, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability launched an investigation into alleged anticompetitive behavior by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Committee Chairman James Comer requested information from government agencies and three of the largest PBMs, citing concerns that consolidation among PBMs has “forced manufacturers to raise their prices” and led to “increased costs for consumers.”

Dr. Stephen Bronars of Edgeworth Economics analyzes the Federal Trade Commission’s stance that non-compete clauses reduce worker earnings across industries, saying that research doesn’t support this conclusion.

In July 2021, the White House ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to promote competition in consumer financial markets through enforcement actions or rule-making. As a result, the CFPB is now poised to begin regulating and enhancing competition in consumer finance.

One of the most relied upon statistical tools implemented by economists is regression analysis, a method with which to study the relationship between a variable of interest and “additional explanatory variables that are thought to produce or be associated with changes in the variable of interest.” Regression analysis can be particularly useful in the context of antitrust litigation.

The relevant economic issues in antitrust class action cases that involve indirect purchasers— class members who did not purchase the product at issue directly from one of the defendants, but instead from another seller further down the supply chain—are often complex and idiosyncratic to each specific industry.

Farmers and ranchers who hire foreign-born seasonal workers on H-2A visas will face prevailing wages in 2023 that are about 9.36% higher, on average, than the prevailing wages for H-2A workers in 2022.

Edgeworth Economics President Chuck Fields and Principal Consultant Dr. Stephanie Cheng recently presented on this topic at the DC SHRM 2022 Annual Conference. This post summarizes their key takeaways from that event.

Regression analysis is a statistical tool used by economists, statisticians, and others to “understand the relationship between or among two or more variables.”  Any attorney new to the antitrust space will invariably encounter regression analysis frequently. In this article, we provide a brief introduction to the regression methodology.

When pharmaceutical manufacturers develop a new branded drug to take to market, they are granted a period of exclusivity via patent to help recoup the massive costs of research and development. Upon expiration of this patent, generic manufacturers can enter the market with therapeutically equivalent products and compete with the brand.

Over the past six months, airfares have increased at a breakneck pace. The consumer price index for airline tickets increased by 63% from November 2021 to May 2022, the largest increase over a 6-month period by far since the index was created in 1989 by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis.

Federal and state labor laws limit which employees can legally be paid a salary independent of hours worked. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is the Federal law requiring that certain workers receive overtime compensation, at 1.5 times their regular rate of pay, for all hours of work above 40 each week.

On March 7th, the Treasury Department released a draft report entitled “The State of Labor Market Competition” (herein “the report” or “the Treasury”), which addressed the level of concentration and anti-competitive labor practices in the U.S. economy. The report claimed to reaffirm the current administration’s executive orders regarding promoting competition in labor markets and examines possible implications.

We gathered our Labor and Employment experts together and asked them:  What is the “Great Resignation,” and what does it mean for employers?

Excerpts of their wide-ranging conversation were lightly edited for clarity and reported here.

Economic experts often employ two approaches that use public settlement information to estimate potential exposure for a client- a top-down approach or a bottom-up approach.