1.4: Research, Reports, Advocacy, and International Cooperation

Enhance consumer welfare through research, reports, advocacy, and international cooperation and exchange

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The FTC complements its law enforcement and education efforts by gathering, analyzing, and making public certain information concerning the nature of business practices in the marketplace. Research, reports, advocacy, rulemaking and advocacy complement law enforcement and education to enhance the welfare of consumers. Our Strategy: The FTC uses a variety of strategies in addition to law enforcement and education to enhance consumer protection. The agency convenes and co-sponsors conferences and workshops through which experts and other experienced and knowledgeable parties identify novel or challenging consumer protection issues and discuss ways to address those issues. The FTC also issues reports that analyze consumer protection problems and provide recommendations to address them. further, the FTC files comments with federal and state government bodies advocating policies that promote the interests of consumers and highlight the role of consumer and empirical research in their decision making. The agency testifies before congress on consumer protection issues. The FTC also files amicus briefs to aid courts’ considerations of consumer protection issues. Performance Results: Public policy that enhances consumer protection is based on a thorough understanding of complex issues, which arises from dialogue, study, and empirical research. such policy also appreciates that stakeholders other than government, such as industry associations or private standard-setting organizations, are at times better placed to address certain consumer protection issues. The four performance measures that the agency uses to gauge success of this objective help ensure that the agency augments its enforcement and education efforts by encouraging discussions among all interested parties, through careful study of and empirical research on novel or challenging consumer protection problems, by urging adoption of policies and legal principles that promote consumers’ interest, and by conducting rulemaking as appropriate. These activities help guide the FTC’s consumer protection policy decisions, as well as those of other state, federal, and international policymakers.

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