Predatory Pricing, Product Improvements, and Wal-Mart

Back in 1996 I contributed this article to a collection of antitrust essays assembled by the F.T.C.'s Malcolm Coate and Andy Kleit (now at Penn State). In it, I discuss a mid-1990s case (in Arkansas courts) against Wal-Mart for allegedly pricing "predatorially" in the Faulkner County, Arkansas, retail pharmaceutical market.  More generally, I lay out some reasons why investments in a predatory-pricing campaign are highly unlikely to be a sensible strategy even for the most egregious monopolist-wannabe.