Working Papers

In many settings where spatial preemption might be expected to produce tightly concentrated industry structures, firms share the market instead. Using a strategic investment model, I show that this

This paper measures market dynamics within the U.S. grocery industry (defined as supermarket, supercenter and club retailers). We find that the composition of outlets changes substantially, roughly 7%

In 2004, the Federal Trade Commission brought legal action retrospectively challenging the 2000 acquisition of Highland Park Hospital by Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in Evanston, Illinois. A major

Recent literature has shown that an incumbent can use exclusive contracts to maintain supra-competitive prices, but only if he completely prevents a more efficient potential entrant from entering, and

Workers value job security. If at least some workers value it enough, then it is efficient for at least some firms to adopt policies in which they commit (implicitly or explicitly) not to dismiss

PUBLISHED AS: Alcohol, antitrust, and the 21st Amendment: An empirical examination of post and hold laws

The Twenty-first Amendment repealed prohibition, but granted the states broad power to regulate

Studies of gasoline prices in multiple countries have found a repeated sequence of asymmetric cycles where a sharp price increase is followed by gradual decreases. This price pattern is linked to

This paper presents new evidence of asymmetric pass-through, the notion that upward cost shocks are passed through faster than downward cost shocks, in U.S. gasoline prices. Much of the extant

We provide the first analysis of potential competition in the generic drug industry. Our identification strategy exploits a provision of the Hatch-Waxman Act that rewards 180 days of marketing

Sunoco’s 2004 acquisition of El Paso’s, New Jersey refinery and Valero’s 2005 acquisition of Premcor’s Delaware refinery significantly consolidated refinery control in the U.S. Northeast. The Federal

A use-or-lose provision requires firms to employ a certain minimum fraction of their productive capacity. Variants have been used by regulators in the airline, natural gas transmission, and electric

Our paper contributes to the literature on the relationship between innovation and market power by considering how changes in the intensity of product market competition affect innovation when

Eight years have elapsed since the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) prevented the merger of the formerly number two and number three baby food manufacturers in the U.S. Since the abandoned merger, the

Despite being a widely used tool in merger enforcement, there have been few studies of whether antitrust divestitures are successful.  We help fill this void by conducting a study of the divestitures

The Federal Trade Commission initiated a Hospital Merger Retrospective Project in 2002 to analyze the effects of consummated mergers.  One of the mergers studied was the 1998 acquisition by New

We provide an in-depth analysis of the price effects of two hospital mergers that occurred in the north shore suburbs of Chicago in early 2000: Evanston Northwestern Healthcare’s (ENH) purchase of

We conduct a retrospective study of the Sutter-Summit hospital merger to assess whether antitrust enforcement in this matter was appropriate.  This consummated merger combined two hospitals located

We estimate the effect of education and student status on the propensity to smoke. Our estimation strategy accounts for the endogeneity of education by “differencing out” the impact of unobserved

In a paper in the March 2004 AER, Justine Hastings concludes that the acquisition of an independent gasoline retailer, Thrifty, by a vertically integrated firm, ARCO, is associated with sizable price

We examine retail gasoline station pricing using three years of weekly prices for 272 stations in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. We report a number of new empirical findings about station