Our Training Materials
We developed these materials along with the Department of Justice and offer them for those experienced at investigating to use in training new staff of competition and consumer protection authorities. They are not intended for self-instruction.
Bookmark this page and visit again soon — we will post additional materials when available.
Competition
Using these materials, trainees investigate and analyze a hypothetical case over the course of three or four days and determine whether or not the competition law has been violated. The cases are fact-rich, and you can tailor them for trainees with different levels of experience in competition law enforcement. They are intended to parallel the real world of investigations and to help trainees learn to select the important and relevant facts from a jumble of unimportant and irrelevant facts. The law can be either a hypothetical law (if the group is from multiple jurisdictions) or the actual competition law of the trainee's jurisdiction.
When we provide onsite training, we intersperse informal lectures on substantive legal and economic issues. We do not offer them below because, each session, we adapt the lectures to the level of the specific trainees.
Hypothetical Abuse of Dominance Materials
- Leader's guide [PDF - 0.6MB]
Includes:
- General plan for individual sessions
- Practical sample questions for investigators
NOTE: The questions do not purport to be comprehensive or to represent any internal FTC policies.
- Documents [PDF - 0.01MB]
Hypothetical, relevant to the investigation- Interview materials [PDF - 0.7MB]
Scripts for individuals playing the roles of witnesses or interviewees
Hypothetical Merger Materials
- Leader's guide [PDF - 0.6MB]
Includes:
- individual session plans
- suggestions for activities to achieve session goals
- additional materials for certain activities
- practical, real-world sample questions for investigators
- model outlines for conducting investigations
NOTE: The questions and outlines do not purport to be comprehensive or to represent any internal FTC policies.
- Background information [PDF - 0.6MB]
Similar to what an investigator already would have before starting an investigation- Documents [PDF - 0.01MB]
Hypothetical, relevant to the investigation- Interview materials [PDF - 0.7MB]
Scripts for individuals playing the roles of witnesses or interviewees
Consumer Protection
Using these materials, trainees learn about the diverse stakeholders, principles, regulatory environments, and mechanisms in a particular sector of the consumer economy and then test their knowledge through real and hypothetical examples. You might find it helpful to co-present workshops with agencies with authority over other significant consumer areas, like food and product safety.
- Overview of FTC's Consumer Protection Initiatives [PDF - 1.2MB]
Advertising Resources
Credit Resources
Your Feedback
We encourage you to submit feedback on these materials.