29 Nov 2016

Report: Amazon’s Stranglehold: How the Company’s Tightening Grip on the Economy Is Stifling Competition, Eroding Jobs, and Threatening Communities

by | Date: 29 Nov 2016 | posted in: Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Amazon has extended its tentacles across our economy. In this report, we pull back the curtain on the company, and find that it’s at the center of increasing inequality and diminishing opportunity, and that it’s concentrating power in ways that endanger competition, community life, and democracy. We also examine how public policy should address Amazon’s high costs.… Read More
3 Oct 2016

Statement on Clinton’s Call for Stronger Antitrust to Protect Small Business

by | Date: 3 Oct 2016 | posted in: Press Release, Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and author of Monopoly Power and the Decline of Small Business: The Case for Restoring America’s Once Robust Antitrust Policies, issued the following statement today in response to Hillary Clinton’s economic policy speech in Ohio, in which she discussed growing corporate concentration and its impact on small business, and called for stronger antitrust measures.… Read More
10 Aug 2016

Monopoly Power and the Decline of Small Business

by | Date: 10 Aug 2016 | posted in: Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

The U.S. is much less a nation of entrepreneurs than it was a generation ago. In this report, which won an award for antitrust scholarship in 2017, we suggest that the decline of small businesses is owed, at least in part, to anticompetitive behavior by large, dominant corporations. The report presents three reasons to bring a commitment to fair markets for small businesses back into antitrust policy, and concludes by outlining specific steps to do just that. … Read More

Photo: A U.S. flag with corporate logos.
4 Aug 2016

After Three Decades of Neglect, Antitrust Is Back on the Democratic Platform

by | Date: 4 Aug 2016 | posted in: Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

For the first time in 28 years, the Democratic Party platform calls for vigorous, stepped-up enforcement of our anti-monopoly laws. This remarkable shift in policy was made possible in part by the Bernie Sanders movement, but it’s also the product of years of advocacy by scholars and activists who believe that high levels of concentration in banking, retail, agribusiness and other sectors are ravaging our economy and democracy.… Read More
10 Feb 2016

Independent Businesses Report Growing Sales and Hiring, but Policies Tilted in Favor of Large Companies Hold Them Back

by | Date: 10 Feb 2016 | posted in: Press Release, Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

The 2016 Independent Business Survey finds that independent businesses experienced brisk sales and a sharp increase in hiring in 2015, but that biased policies and other obstacles are limiting their success.… Read More
2 Sep 2015

Stacy Mitchell Speaks at American Antitrust Institute’s “Symposium on Entrepreneurship and Antitrust”

by | Date: 2 Sep 2015 | posted in: Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

In these remarks, made on a panel at an American Antitrust Institute event, ILSR’s Stacy Mitchell makes the case that the national thinking on antitrust has gone awry since the 1970s, when antitrust shifted away from its longstanding goal of maintaining robust competition to focus instead on efficiency and low prices.… Read More
27 Jul 2015

Coalition of Authors Calls for an Investigation into Amazon’s Monopoly

by | Date: 27 Jul 2015 | posted in: Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Amazon’s predatory monopoly is still unchecked, but a coalition of authors is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate it. In a 24-page letter, the coalition contends that Amazon is abusing its market power in ways that undermine competition and compromise liberty, free speech, and democracy.
… Read More

Map: Walmart Square Footage per person in 2014.
23 Mar 2015

New Maps Show Alarming Pace of Walmart’s Continued Growth

by | Date: 23 Mar 2015 | posted in: Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Walmart continues to expand, and rapidly. The company is now embarking on its third historic wave of store construction, with plans to build 440 to 460 “Neighborhood Market” stores over a two year period, presumably with many hundreds more to follow. There is a critical debate to be had right now about whether a company that already captures one-quarter of U.S. grocery sales should be allowed to grow to control one-third, or even half, of our food supply. … Read More

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