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Matrix for price discrimination
Source andie nachgeborenen
Date 03/08/11/22:43

--- "Devine, James" jdevine@LMU.EDU wrote:
> but there must be exceptions to that law or price
> discrimination wouldn't be so common. Perhaps the
> economist's definition of price discrimination
> differs from the lawyer's? the former would include
> "senior" discounts at movie theaters, coupons at
> grocery stores, etc., etc.

Here is the conduct prohibited in the statute, 15 USC
sec 13(a).

(a) Price; selection of customers

It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in
commerce, in the course of such commerce, either
directly or indirectly, to discriminate in price
between different purchasers of commodities of like
grade and quality, where either or any of the
purchases involved in such discrimination are in
commerce, where such commodities are sold for use,
consumption, or resale within the United States or any
Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any
insular possession or other place under the
jurisdiction of the United States, and where the
effect of such discrimination may be substantially to
lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any
line of commerce, or to injure, destroy, or prevent
competition with any person who either grants or
knowingly receives the benefit of such discrimination,
or with customers of either of them: Provided, That
nothing herein contained shall prevent differentials
which make only due allowance for differences in the
cost of manufacture, sale, or delivery resulting from
the differing methods or quantities in which such
commodities are to such purchasers sold or delivered:
Provided, however, That the Federal Trade Commission
may, after due investigation and hearing to all
interested parties, fix and establish quantity limits,
and revise the same as it finds necessary, as to
particular commodities or classes of commodities,
where it finds that available purchasers in greater
quantities are so few as to render differentials on
account thereof unjustly discriminatory or promotive
of monopoly in any line of commerce; and the foregoing
shall then not be construed to permit differentials
based on differences in quantities greater than those
so fixed and established: And provided further, That
nothing herein contained shall prevent persons engaged
in selling goods, wares, or merchandise in commerce
from selecting their own customers in bona fide
transactions and not in restraint of trade: And
provided further, That nothing herein contained shall
prevent price changes from time to time where in
response to changing conditions affecting the market
for or the marketability of the goods concerned, such
as but not limited to actual or imminent deterioration
of perishable goods, obsolescence of seasonal goods,
distress sales under court process, or sales in good
faith in discontinuance of business in the goods
concerned.

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