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This article responds to James Keyte, Paul Eckles, and Karen Lent’s article “From Hydrogen Peroxide to Comcast: The New Rigor in Antitrust Class Actions” (“The New Rigor”). It argues that The New Rigor offers valuable strategic advice to defense counsel – and insight into defense counsel’s strategic thinking – but is much less effective as an objective statement of the law or a normative argument for legal reform. In the parlance that I adopt, The New Rigor succeeds in the role of coach but much less so in the roles of commentator and critic.

In 2009, the Third Circuit decided Hydrogen Peroxide, which announced a more rigorous standard under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) for assessing whether a putative class could establish antitrust injury. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court decided Comcast v. Behrend, a case that carries potentially broad implications for both antitrust cases and Rule 23(b)(3) class actions generally. A review of the case law starting with Hydrogen Peroxide and continuing through Comcast and its progeny reveals the new rigor in antitrust class action decisions and suggests what the future may hold, including the type of arguments that may provide defendants the most likely chance of defeating class certification. After Comcast, rigor under 23(b)(3) can no longer be avoided in assessing all class actions questions, and courts should now apply Daubert fully in the class setting concerning both impact and damages. Courts should also closely evaluate plaintiffs’ proposed methodologies for proving impact to determine if they apply to each class member. Finally, courts will inevitably have to determine how rigorously to scrutinize experts’ damages methodologies and whether Comcast requires or suggests more scrutiny in assessing common evidence for measuring damages.

To develop a framework for systematically defining the relevant market for intermediate goods that incorporates downstream market conditions.

We combine the well-established “Hicks-Marshall” conditions of derived demand for inputs with “critical loss/critical elasticity of demand” to yield insights into the definition of antitrust markets for intermediate goods and the competitive effects from a merger.

We show that examining “Hicks-Marshall” conditions can provide a more rigorous framework for analyzing relevant markets for intermediate goods. We also show that solely examining demand substitution possibilities for direct customers of an input can lead to an incorrect market definition.

Our framework may be difficult to apply in circumstances when several different downstream products use the input being examined and each of those downstream products has a different elasticity of demand.

We illustrate how reasonable ranges for key parameters relating to the ability of firms to substitute to other inputs and to adjust to downstream market conditions will often be sufficient to define antitrust markets for intermediate goods in practice.

Previous antitrust analysis has not systematically analyzed the impact of downstream market conditions in assessing market definition for intermediate goods. The framework we develop will be useful to future researchers attempting to define relevant markets for intermediate goods and evaluating the competitive effects of a merger.

Europe is most desperately in need of the products of which there is a world‐wide shortage—fats and oils, meat and sugar. The problem of supplying wheat is not expected to be so serious. A special committee on food operating under authority of the Inter‐Agency Committee on Foreign Shipments estimates that liberated Europe requires imports of approximately the following quantities by the end of this year: Fats and oils, 800,000 tons; sugar, 800,000 tons; milk, 186,000 tons; wheat 8,000,000 tons; meat, poultry and cheese, 650,000 tons. However, these figures do not include any important needs for Italy, which was scheduled to receive 1,618,600 tons before the miltary relief programme ended, and which will need much more in the coming year. This brings fats and oil consumption up to only 90 per cent. of the pre‐war level, raises milk and meat supplies by only 10 per cent. of the pre‐war level, and allows only 22 lbs. of sugar per person. The analysis of need in Europe has given weight to two important considerations; (1) Basic physiological needs, and (2) customary habits of consumption. The latter is reflected in the pre‐war diets of the people of the liberated countries. In estimating the needs of Europeans for the coming year—taking both physiological needs and pre‐war habits into consideration, the Committee was concerned with food of four basic groups: fats and oils, proteins, sugar and wheat. (1) Fats and Oils. Nutritional authorities throughout the world agree that there is an urgent physiological need for a minimum quantity of fats as an element in the diets of all populations. This may be either “visible fat”—such as butter, or shortening used in cooking other foods, or it may be “invisible fats,” from other foods, such as meat, eggs, fish and milk. The Inter‐Allied Post‐War Requirements Bureau, set up in London prior to the establishment of U.N.R.R.A. and made up of representatives of the United Nations, states that just under 20 lbs. a year is the base level of visible fat needs. The nutrient values group of the combined working party on European food supplies (composed of representatives from the liberated areas as consultants) reported that 20 per cent. of the total calories obtained from a diet should come from fat and not less than half of this should come from “visible fat.” Thus, to provide 10 per cent. of 2,000 calories, which was the minimum target set by military authorities, to prevent disease and unrest in the urban civilian populations during the period of military operations would require just under 20 lbs. of fat from butter, margarine, shortening, lard and oils. (2) High Quality Protein Foods. This group includes meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy products other than butter, and (dried beans, peas, lentils, etc). Dairy products are measured, not in terms of the fluid content, but of the milk solids contained in them. Meats are the high quality protein foods for which the most urgent demands are expressed in the liberated countries, but some other foods, on a lb.‐for‐lb. basis, will provide equal or greater quantities of protein. About 20 grammes per day is commonly referred to as the minimum quantity of high quality protein on which a person can remain healthy over a considerable period; to reduce consumption below that amount in most countries means malnutrition. For purposes of estimating the minimum essential quantities of protein needed, the United Nations have made computations on the basis of 40 kilograms per head per year—or roughly 88 lbs. of quality protein foods. (3) Sugar. The need for sugar, a concentrated source of energy, seems to rest on both psychological and physiological importance. Food authorities state that curtailments of consumptions of the very low levels that prevail throughout the war in most countries cause particular inconvenience and create the acutest sense of deprivation. The United Nations food authorities, therefore, in computing the sugar needs of the liberated areas, have drawn up tables to show the imports needed to bring countries up to 22 lbs. per year, or to pre‐war levels if they were below 22 lbs. (4) Wheat. Wheat and other cereals must make up the calorie deficits remaining after the minimum supplies of fats and oils proteins and sugar have been provided in the diet. In most European nations, cereals have played a more dominant part in the average diet than has been true in the United States.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

LIBRARIES have come impressively into the public picture in the past year or two, and seldom with more effect than when Their Majesties the King and Queen opened the new Central Reference Library at Manchester on July 17th. In a time, which is nearly the end of a great depression, that the city which probably felt the depression more than any in the Kingdom should have proceeded with the building of a vast store‐house of learning is a fact of great social significance and a happy augury for libraries as a whole. His Majesty the King has been most felicitous in providing what we may call “slogans” for libraries. It will be remembered that in connection with the opening of the National Central Library, he suggested that it was a “University which all may join and which none need ever leave” —words which should be written in imperishable letters upon that library and be printed upon its stationery for ever. As Mr. J. D. Stewart said at the annual meeting of the National Central Library, it was a slogan which every public library would like to appropriate. At Manchester, His Majesty gave us another. He said: “To our urban population open libraries are as essential to health of mind, as open spaces to health of body.” This will be at the disposal of all of us for use. It is a wonderful thing that Manchester in these times has been able to provide a building costing £450,000 embodying all that is modern and all that is attractive in the design of libraries. The architect, Mr. Vincent Harris, and the successive librarians, Mr. Jast and Mr. Nowell, are to be congratulated upon the crown of their work.

The puropse of this paper is to explore the extent to which principles of lean product development are applied to product design and engineering at automotive companies in South Africa (SA). Survey, interview and observational data form the basis for an adaptation of Toyota’s lean product development system (LPDS) (Morgan and Liker, 2006) to the South African automotive product engineering context.

All seven automotive manufacturers then operating in SA (including Toyota) were investigated, together with sample of those suppliers carrying out product engineering and/or design locally. A questionnaire based on the LPDS, and follow-up interviews were used to ascertain the extent to which lean principles informed product engineering, and identify areas where there was scope for improvement.

The survey established that while SA automotive companies have a strong manufacturing focus there is very limited local product design and development (PD&D), as this tends to be carried out centrally for multinationals. However, global product designs require modifications to suit local conditions and many decisions about manufacturability are taken locally. This broad area of design-related activity will be termed product engineering. The study found considerable scope for increasing the extent to which aspects of product engineering were influenced by lean thinking. An adapted version of the LPDS is proposed to aid lean thinking in product engineering in this context.

This study provides information on the application of lean thinking in product engineering, an area that has attracted far less attention than manufacturing and PD&D. Furthermore it addresses a significant sector of an important emerging economy, and contributes a practitioner perspective to what is predominantly a theoretical literature.

BOOKS are among the greatest and most wonderful achievements of human genius, they are also a powerful means of struggle for progress. The book accompanies man all his life; it is a creation of his brain and soul. It reflects the life of mankind and is the result of collective efforts of author and publisher, type‐setter and illustrator. But foremost a book is always and everywhere a social and political phenomenon. One of the most apt evaluations of the book was given by V. I. Lenin in 1917, when he was known to state to A. V. Lunacharsky, “The book is a great force indeed”.