Cursed with slender profit margins and price-cutting competition from Wal-Mart, supermarkets have been anything but super for years.

FORBES

Price-cutting competition in telecoms will come more from new providers such as call-back services, which allow callers in Japan to take advantage of cheaper rates elsewhere.

ECONOMIST: Deregulation in Japan

The result was a capacity glut, ferocious competition and frantic price-cutting.

ECONOMIST: How much longer can things go on getting worse?

Antitrust regulators worry especially about the effects on competition and innovation when it is a maverick, like the price-cutting TNT, that is being eliminated.

ECONOMIST: Global express-package companies