I cannot offer evidence to that, but as a rational economic actor looking to maximize its profits, it seems obvious to me that it would be in WalMart best interest to act like this?
First, you kill competition, second you jack up the prices once you have established a defacto monopoly (or oligopoly)? See Uber lowering prices last year and "suddenly" rising them this month, now that they are the defacto standard in many cities?
Whethever or not laws & regulations should be in place to protect the consumer against that kind of behaviour is another debate :-)
Some variation of the prisoner dilemma could be raised as a counter argument to my comment, though...
The question isn't whether they would like to raise prices, but whether they can.
You know the King in the Little Price? He ruled over the whole universe - provided he just made reasonable demands, like ordering the sun to rise at dawn.
Likewise, some monopolies are only kept as long as the monopolist doesn't actually abuse it, because as soon as they do, it starts to make sense for competitors to open up.
Then the question becomes: if Walmart raised its prices so much, why didn't one of the other large chains move in to the same area?
Personally, I started asking anonbanker about it because I find most claims of long-term abuse of monopolies won without State help (Standard Oil being the typical example) to be flimsy at best, so I'm interested in finding good cases. Usually either the monopoly doesn't last very long or it's actually not being abused.
First, you kill competition, second you jack up the prices once you have established a defacto monopoly (or oligopoly)? See Uber lowering prices last year and "suddenly" rising them this month, now that they are the defacto standard in many cities?
Whethever or not laws & regulations should be in place to protect the consumer against that kind of behaviour is another debate :-)
Some variation of the prisoner dilemma could be raised as a counter argument to my comment, though...