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33 St. Louis U. L.J. 379 (1988-1989)
The Federal Trade Commission's Competition and Consumer Advocacy Program

handle is hein.journals/stlulj33 and id is 389 raw text is: THE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION'S COMPETITION AND CONSUMER ADVOCACY PROGRAM ARNOLD C. CELNICKER* I. INTRODUCTION While abandoning much on the traditional menu of antitrust en- forcement, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is engaged in an un- precedented effort to eliminate government imposed, anticompetitive restraints. As Daniel Oliver, the current FTC Chairman, explained: It is now convincingly argued that state and local governments create some of the most blatantly anti-competitive combinations to be found in the economy. The anti-consumer results are evidenced by, for example, higher milk prices, and scarce and expensive taxi- cabs, in cities like New York. States issue building codes that ex- clude competing products. State licensing often creates cartels for doctors and morticians. The list goes on.' Since the FTC's efforts to utilize its enforcement authority to rem- edy the blatantly anti-competitive combinations created by state and local governments faltered on the state-action doctrine,' only one viable weapon remained with which the FTC could fight anticompetitive gov- ernmental activity-persuasion. In response, the FTC created the Com- petition and Consumer Advocacy Program- to persuade federal, state, and local government officials to act in a manner that increases compe- tition or enhances the market's ability to efficiently allocate resources, and thereby maximize consumer welfare. The Program is minor in scope. Its estimated annual cost is less than four million dollars. Based upon the survey data collected for this Article, the Program has failed * Assistant Professor, College of Business, Ohio State University; Adjunct Profes- sor for Antitrust, Ohio State University College of Law. B.A. 1969, State University of New York at Buffalo; M.A. 1972, University of Wisconsin at Madison; J.D. 1975, University of Denver. Professor Celnicker was an attorney with the Federal Trade Commission from April 1975 to August 1987. 1. Address by Daniel Oliver, Chairman of the FTC, Antitrust Reform: Staying Alive? 5, The 20th New England Antitrust Conference (Nov. 15, 1986) (available from the FTC). 2. Generally, a state may displace competition with regulation, which it actively supervises. See Southern Motor Carriers Rate Conference, Inc. v. United States, 471 U.S. 48 (1985); Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341 (1943). 3. The FTC's Competition and Consumer Advocacy Program was previously re- ferred to as the Intervention Program. This Article uses those two terms and the terms Advocacy Program and Program interchangeably.

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