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Sherman Act

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1-Was Continental’s conduct illegal under the Sherman Act? Why or why not?

2-Is predatory pricing a per se violation? (Support your answer).

Section 2 of the Sherman Act prohibits monopolizing and I believe Continental’s conduct is illegal under the Sherman Act because ITT is engaged in predatory pricing. ITT Continental lowered the actual cost of the bread to drive a potential competitor Inglis bakery out of the market and the lower prices earned ITT more grocery shelf space.
Jennings. Marianne M. Business: Its Legal, Ethical, and Global Environment. 9th Edition. Chapter 16 page 532-533.
As per the text (pg 539) price fixing is the following: Any agreement or collaboration among competitors “for the purpose and with the effect of raising, depressing, fixing, pegging, or stabilizing the price of a commodity” is price fixing, is a per se violation of Section1 of the Sherman Act.

Horizontal price fixing deals with agreements between and among sellers and competitors to set up prices on certain goods. And vertical price fixing deals with agreements between a manufacturer, distributor, supplier or retailer.
Jennings. Marianne M. Business: Its Legal, Ethical, and Global Environment. 9th Edition. Chapter 16
A monopoly is a situation when a company owns all or majority of the market for certain products, goods, or services. This occurs when there is a barrier to entry into the business that lets one company to operate without competition. Microsoft was convicted of having a monopoly because they attempted to monopolize the web browser market and it used other means to maintain its operating system monopoly. Microsoft wanted all the windows operating system to only use Internet Explorer as a browser which didn’t give other companies a fair

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