Rev Ind Organ DOI 10.1007/s11151-014-9444-x Economics at the FTC: Office Supply Retailers Redux, Healthcare Quality Efficiencies Analysis, and Litigation of an Alleged Get-Rich-Quick Scheme Keith Brand · Martin Gaynor · Patrick McAlvanah · David Schmidt · Elizabeth Schneirov © Springer Science+Business Media New York (outside the USA) 2014 Abstract We discuss in this essay three of the matters on which economists in the Bureau of Economics (BE) at the Federal Trade Commission have worked this past year. BE revisited familiar ground in the first matter, a proposed merger of office supply retailers. The second part of the essay considers efficiency claims in health care mergers, with focus on the acquisition of a physician group by a health care system in Idaho. The final part of the essay discusses empirical work that was undertaken by the Bureau to investigate claims made by marketers of an alleged get-rich-quick scheme. Keywords Antitrust · Consumer protection · Fraud · FTC · Healthcare · Retailing K. Brand · M. Gaynor (B ) · P. McAlvanah · D. Schmidt · E. Schneirov Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Economics, 600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20580, USA e-mail: mgaynor@ftc.gov K. Brand e-mail: kbrand@ftc.gov P. McAlvanah e-mail: pmcalvanah@ftc.gov D. Schmidt e-mail: dschmidt@ftc.gov E. Schneirov e-mail: eschneirov@ftc.gov M. Gaynor H. John Heinz III College, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA e-mail: mgaynor@cmu.edu 123