Small is vulnerable
Booksellers can tell pharmacists about life after retail price maintenance
BRITAIN'S last bit of government-sanctioned price-fixing was ruled illegal on May 15th. The Restrictive Practices Court decided that makers of over-the-counter remedies could no longer set minimum retail prices for their products. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) brought the suit because of big gaps between prices for branded and unbranded drugs. In countries without price-fixing, such as America, prices for equivalent products are lower (see table).
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Small is vulnerable”
From the May 19th 2001 edition
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