logoalt Hacker News

cyberaxtoday at 6:35 AM2 repliesview on HN

I'm sorry, my fault. I studied economics in Russia, and the term "dumping" was used in a more general sense as "selling goods or services below their cost".

Russian laws officially use the term "monopolistically low prices", and prohibit them if the entity engaging in such pricing holds a dominating presence in the market (and not necessarily for the goods that are being underpriced).

A correct term for the US is "predatory pricing", and it's also prohibited by the Sherman Act. For much the same reason, a large entity can destroy competition by accepting losses from selling goods below the cost. The border between loss leaders and predatory pricing is, as usual, very blurred.


Replies

JumpCrisscrosstoday at 7:09 AM

> I studied economics in Russia, and the term "dumping" was used in a more general sense as "selling goods or services below their cost"

Oooh! Do you have a recommendation for a translation of a Russian economics text? I’m particularly curious of Soviet-era texts that work on theory without prices.

> correct term for the US is "predatory pricing", and it's also prohibited by the Sherman Act

Sherman prohibits the “restraint of trade or commerce” [1]. The word “price” never appears in its text. In practice, predatory pricing is a tightly-regulated term that doesn’t generally prohibit selling goods below cost

[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-3055/pdf/COMPS-305...

show 1 reply