Posted by D. Daniel Sokol
Over at the Antitrust and Competition Policy Blog, I just hosted an online symposium on competition in agriculture issues.
The Department of Justice and US Department of Agriculture announced in August 2009 that they would be organizing a series of public workshops in 2010 focusing on competition in the agriculture sector. They also launched a public comment period that ran until the end of 2010 soliciting comments from interested stakeholders on the state of competition in the agriculture sector. The first workshop will be held in Ankeny, Iowa on March 12th and subsequent workshops will take place throughout the country in 2010. For more details please see here.
Ahead of the workshops, I asked a number of experts on agriculture and competition issues to provide comments of no more than 300 words on the following topics:
What is the appropriate role of government and antitrust enforcement in the agriculture sector?
What are the potential long-term impacts of the DOJ and USDA workshop series on the agriculture sector?
Given the GAO report on consumer impacts of industry consolidation, what consumer benefits could be delivered/harmed via antitrust action in the agriculture sector?
What considerations should be taken into account when regulators become involved in commercial disputes?
There have been a number of discussions about the intersection between intellectual property and competition policy. What should regulators keep in mind when they enter into such discussions?
Participants (and links to their posts) are below:
Andy Novakovic (Cornell - Agriculture and Applied Economics)
Kyle Stiegert (University of Wisconsin, Agriculture and Applied Economics)
Scott Kieff (GW Law), Geoff Manne (Lewis & Clark Law), and Josh Wright (George Mason Law)
Peter Carstensen (University of Wisconsin Law)
Mike Sykuta (Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Missouri-Columbia)
Jeff Harrison (University of Florida Levin College of Law)
Ron Cass (Chairman, Center for the Rule of Law and Dean Emeritus, Boston University School of Law)
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