Leggin v. PSKS: Economic Consultant’s Full Employment Act of 2007

With a hat tip to Mark Thoma, let’s notice how Tom Bozzo may be in store for more paid consulting work as a result of this recent Supreme Court decision:

Yesterday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority decided that arrangements to fix minimum retail prices (“resale price maintenance,” or RPM) between manufacturers and their retailers are not “per se” anticompetitive and must instead be judged by the “rule of reason” on the merits or demerits of particular RPM deals. As an equity holder in an economic consulting firm, my first reaction was, “Woohoo! The economic consultant’s full employment act of 2007!”

Maybe I should send my resume to Tom. Tom then gets down to a discussion of the pros and cons of resale price maintenance (RPM):

Before going further, these RPM agreements are not the same sort of restrictions as are provided by minimum markup laws such as Wisconsin’s Unfair Sales Act Such laws directly affect the terms of interbrand competition – the Shell station is limited in its ability to try to underprice the Mobil station down the street – whereas the RPM agreements (directly) limit intrabrand competition. The former are much likelier to have adverse effects on consumers. The standard story (again via Mankiw) suggests that RPM agreements may be valuable in that they ensure retailers enjoy sufficient markups to pay for what the manufacturer considers to be valuable ancillary services – retail shop ambiance, demonstrations of complex products, etc. In the absence of such arrangements, it’s claimed, there’s a free-rider problem as cut-price retailers direct their customers to go to full-service stores for the free services and then to come back to buy the product on the cheap. In the end, the full-service retailers can’t provide the services (or underprovides them) and everyone’s worse-off. One thing about this type of arrangement is that it appears, on the face, to be allocatively inefficient. That is, in static resource allocation problems, the “market” puts resources to their best possible uses when prices and marginal costs are equal. RPM agreements increase the gap between prices and marginal cost of the affected retail products in order to subsidize the provision of ancillary services at zero price. Whether and how much consumers benefit depends on how they value the ancillary services; it seems uncontroversial that there are, indeed, some people who don’t need the hand-holding and/or don’t care about having a “free” skinny chai latte while they shop. The part of the theoretical story that I buy less is that the subsidy is necessary to solve the free-rider problem. An alternative is not that the provision of the ancillary services collapses, but rather than full-service retailers explicitly charge for them (or at least those with nontrivial costs). This happens quite a bit in some markets. For example, interior decorators can (and do) “unbundle” their design services by charging for design consultation; they can (and will) rebate the design fees for customers who subsequently purchase stuff through the designers. Car dealers in Wisconsin can charge a fee to cover “reasonable” costs related to the sales process. The stickers advertising these fees seem to have become much more prevalent since the advent of Intertube-assisted car buying. We haven’t yet had the opportunity to determine whether those fees are negotiable. Clothing stores charge for alterations on sale merchandise. The list, I’m sure, could go on … To the extent that the potential market failure doesn’t turn into an actual one, then it’s very hard to see how consumers would enjoy significant net benefit from RPM arrangements. The appearance of amici such as the American Petroleum Institute and National Association of Manufacturers – not exactly defenders of the Little Guy — in favor of the legality of RPM heightens my doubt that consumer benefits are what’s really at stake in the case. And I’m skeptical that maintaining brand images by keeping up the appearance of high prices has dynamic efficiency benefits to speak of. That said, the SCOTUS majority’s view that, in effect, the costs and benefits should be weighed isn’t that controversial. However, the end result may still be consistent with Justice Breyer’s expectation, in the dissent, that the main effect will be higher retail prices.