...The Role and Measurement of Quality in Competition Analysis 2013 The OECD Competition Committee discussed the role and measurement of quality in competition analysis in June 2013. This document contains an executive summary of that debate and the documents from the meeting: an analytical note by the OECD staff and written submissions: Australia, Canada, Chile, the European Union, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, United Kingdom, Ukraine, United States and BIAC. A note by Theodore Voorhees Jr. as well as a detailed summary of the discussion are also included. Competition policy is just as concerned with quality as it is with prices. While the importance of quality is undisputed and issues about quality are mentioned pervasively in competition agency guidelines and court decisions, there is no widely-agreed framework for analysing it which often renders its treatment superficial. There are a number of reasons why in practice, courts and competition authorities rarely analyse quality effects as rigorously as they analyse price effects. First, quality is a subjective concept and therefore much harder to define and measure than prices. In addition, microeconomic theory offers little help in predicting how changes in the level of competition in a market will affect quality and it is usually up to empirical analysis to determine how quality will change in response to varying degrees of competition in the context of particular markets. Given difficulties in terms of the evaluation...
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...ANNUAL REPORt 2011 Johnson & Johnson will continue to bring meaningful innovations to people around the world so they can live better and healthier lives. We are deeply committed and dedicated to the people who use our products, our employees, the communities in which we live and work, and you, our shareholders. Most important, we will never lose sight of who we are. ON tHE COVER Matt Cox, who has type 1 diabetes and uses the waterproof ANIMAS® VIBE™ insulin pump, swam an English Channel relay to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Matt wants to show his son, Jack, who also has type 1 diabetes, that the condition need not hold him back in life. Read Matt’s story on page 16. CHAIRMAN’S LETTER To Our Shareholders hroughout our annual report this year, you’ll read the severe economic decline; the tightening of consumer about how Johnson & Johnson is bringing meaningful spending and health care budgets; over-the-counter (OTC) innovation to our patients and customers, and making product quality issues at McNeil Consumer Healthcare and a difference in their lives in a personal way—from the recall of the DePuy ASR™ Hip System. Brunhilde Wecker, who made a full recovery from her stroke Our company was severely tested. thanks to our new blood clot retrieval and removal device, In managing through this stretch, we relied heavily on the resolve to our own Bill Hait, an oncologist whose vision and insights of our people and on our time-tested business...
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