Kirjahaku

This report is the latest in a series on cigarette sales, advertising, and promotion that the Federal Trade Commission ("Commission") has prepared since 1967.The statistical tables appended to this report provide information on domestic sales and advertising and promotional activity by the largest U.S. cigarette manufacturers. The tables were compiled from data contained in special reports submitted to the Commission pursuant to compulsory process by: Altria Group, Inc.; Commonwealth Brands, Inc.; Lorillard, Inc.; Reynolds American, Inc.; and Vector Group Ltd.

The FTC is a highly productive and efficient, bipartisan independent agency with a broad mission. It is the only federal agency with jurisdiction to both protect consumers and maintain competition in most sectors of the economy. The agency enforces laws that prohibit business practices that are unfair or deceptive to consumers, or anticompetitive, and seeks to do so without impeding legitimate business activity. The vast majority of our law enforcement decisions are made unanimously.The FTC also educates consumers and businesses to encourage informed consumer choices, compliance with the law, and public understanding of the competitive process. In addition, the FTC promotes consumer protection and competitive markets through its research, advocacy, and policy work.

A consumer guide to planning funerals. With tips on costs, services and products, cemetery sites, etc.

Identity theft happens when someone steals your personal information and uses it without your permission. It is a serious crime that can wreak havoc with your finances, credit history, and reputation - and it can take time, money, and patience to resolve. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation's consumer protection agency, prepared this guide to help you repair the damage that identity theft can cause, and reduce the risk ofidentity theft happening to you.If you suspect that someone has stolen your identity, acting quickly is the best way to limit the damage. Setting things straight involves some work. This guide has tips, worksheets, blank forms, and sample letters to guideyou through the recovery process. It covers: - what identity theft victims must do immediately- what problems may crop up- how you can reduce your risk of identity theft

Know your rights as a consumer and what to keep in mind when making funeral arrangements.

The FTC has been examining the privacy implications of mobile devices since 2000, in the form of workshops, law enforcement actions, consumer education, testimony, and policy reports. On May 30, 2012, the FTC held a workshop entitled "In Short: Advertising and Privacy Disclosures in a Digital World." The concluding panel at that workshop explored how privacy disclosures on mobile devices could be short, effective, and accessible to consumers.Based on more than a decade of work on mobile privacy issues and recent data obtained through panel discussions and comments, the Commission offers this staff report providing recommendations for best practices on mobile privacy disclosures. First, the report reviews the benefits and privacy risks of mobile technologies. Second, it discusses the FTC's efforts to address mobile privacy, as well as its research on disclosure issues generally. It then summarizes general themes raised by panel participants. Finally, it sets forth recommendations for best practices to key commercial players involved in the mobile arena - platforms, app developers, third parties such as ad networks and analytics companies, and trade associations. The recommendations are intended to promote more effective privacy disclosures.

The ability of incumbent firms to maintain their market power by deterring entry has been a topic of considerable interest for some time. With the advent of game theory, economists have recognized that entry deterrence strategies must be credible. Imposing this credibility requirement on an incumbent's strategy in a price or quantity setting game with the entrant has had a profound effect on the analysis of several types of entrydeterrence strategies, such as limit pricing (e.g., Milgrom and Roberts 1982) or capacityexpansion (e.g., Dixit 1980). Typically, however, these analyses have not considered thecredibility of the incumbent's decision to remain in the market or to exit. They have assumed parameter values such that exit is never optimal (the no exit threat is always credible) or that the incumbent can commit not to exit the market. In industries with large fixed, but not sunk, costs, however, exit can be the profit maximizing strategy when faced with an entrant who may be much more efficient or have a far superior product.American Airlines, for example, decided to abandon its San Jose hub and many routeswithin California shortly after Southwest Airlines entered the San Jose market (San Jose Mercury News 1993; Washington Post 1993). In fact, as the above quote indicates, the credibility of the no exit threat could become increasingly important as rapidly advancing technology provides opportunities for entrants to topple dominant firms in many industries. Thus, it is more important than ever to analyze the effect of the exit option on the ability of incumbents to deter entry.

Agents play an important role in many search markets. In the real estate market, for example, agents improve the efficiency of the search process by helping buyers and sellers locate trading partners, identify situations where there are gains from trade, and take care of the technical details of a transaction. Agents may also have an important effect on the flow of information between buyers and sellers, depending on whom the agents work for and the nature of their legal responsibilities. For instance, if an agent helps a buyer to find trading partners, it is likely that he will learn a great deal about the buyer's preferences. Unless the agent is bound by a duty of confidentiality, he may reveal what he knows to sellers, who would presumably benefit from access to this information, since they could use it when formulating their bargaining strategy. It may be in the agent's interest to strengthen the seller's hand if, as is common in the real estatemarket, his compensation is proportional to the sales price that the buyer and seller negotiate.In this book we investigate how the role that agents play in a search market affects welfare.Our principal question is whether agents should be able to transmit information about buyers'willingness-to-pay to sellers, assuming that society's goal is to maximize the discounted expected gains from trade that the market generates. To this end, we analyze the equilibrium that arises in a search market under alternative assumptions about the agents' role. For concreteness, we develop our results using a model of the real estate market, but our conclusions are applicable to any search market in which sellers wish to sell and buyers wish to buy one unit of an indivisible good, buyers are privately informed about their valuations, and sellers' valuations are commonly known