I wonder if that is on a per pinch basis?  I refused to believe this is real language, from a real bill.  But Professor Bainbridge says it is — and doesn’t pull any punches in describing its drafter (or at least leading proponent) Assemblyman Ortiz in NY as an “officious pig and an ass.”   But rest assured, Assemblyman Ortiz assures the good citizens of New York that the bill is really about giving consumers more choice, and “more control over the amount of sodium they intake,” and “the option to exercise healthier diets and healthier lifestyles.”

Read the full piece here. 

Looking for something to blame for the Greek debt crisis, some observers are pointing their fingers at credit derivatives. An article in yesterday’s New York Times makes the case that credit default swaps (CDS), and specifically their sale by Goldman Sachs, are somewhat to blame in part for Greece’s problems.

Read the full piece here. 

TradeComet’s antitrust suit against Google has been dismissed by the S.D.N.Y. Court in which the case was being heard.  The opinion is available here.

The holding…

Read the full piece here. 

The WSJ implies that the answer is yes in an interesting article describing the Obama administration’s changing views on behavioral economics and regulation.  The theme of the article is that the Obama administration has eschewed the “soft paternalism” based “nudge” approach endorsed by the behavioral economics crowd and that received so much attention in the blogs — especially as it related to Cass Sunstein’s appointment to OIRA, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and a few other issues — in favor of harder paternalism and “shoves” including recent proposals for “regulating health-insurance rate increases, separating commercial banking from investing on behalf of their own bottom lines, and prohibiting commercial banks from owning or investing in private-equity firms or hedge funds.”  The article also points to a proposal for new regulations (that I had not heard of prior), that “would require retirement counselors to base their advice on computer models that have been certified as independent” as a precondition that must be satisfied before advisers can push funds with which they are affiliated.

Read the full piece here. 

It turns out that the Girl Scouts price discriminate, i.e. they charge different prices for the same product in different parts of the country (HT: Knowledge Problem).   Rumor has it that demand for Thin Mints varies by region.  While the Girl Scouts concede that the introduction of the price discrimination scheme results, when coupled with  Girl Scout marketing efforts,  is tantamount to the evading pricing constraints imposed by current demand conditions.  No word on whether the Girl Scouts have hired antitrust counsel in light of the Commission’s pushing of this definition of actionable antitrust conduct in N-Data and Ovation (amongst other cases).

Read the full piece here.

Today, the Commission announced a consent decree with Transitions Optical in an exclusionary conduct case.  Here’s the FTC description…

Read the full piece here. 

Some California design students tracked the ingredients in their favorite local taco and came up with this cool image.

Read the full piece here.

Professor Bainbridge has a provocative post up taking on empirical legal scholarship generally.  The While the Professor throws a little bit of a nod toward quantitative work, suggesting it might at least provide some “relevant gist for the analytical mill,” he concludes that “it’s always going to be suspect — and incomplete — in my book.”  Here’s a taste…

Read the full piece here. 

Richard Thaler’s NYT Economic View column features Tom Hazlett (my colleague, and former chief economist as the FCC) proposal for auctioning off TV spectrum.   Thaler points out…

Read the full piece here.