Abigail Ferguson, Nellie Lew, Michael Lipsitz, Devesh Raval
{"title":"Economics at the FTC: Spatial Demand, Veterinary Hospital Mergers, Rulemaking, and Noncompete Agreements","authors":"Abigail Ferguson, Nellie Lew, Michael Lipsitz, Devesh Raval","doi":"10.1007/s11151-023-09930-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-023-09930-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The U.S. Federal Trade Commission enforces federal competition and consumer protection laws that prevent anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices, and works to advance government policies that protect consumers and promote competition. The FTC’s Bureau of Economics performs economic analysis to support both the enforcement and policy activities of the Commission. This article discusses several examples of these activities. We first discuss some work our economists have done on spatial considerations in demand estimation, and then present an analytical approach that has been developed to assess consumer choice between service providers with the use of data on geographic variation in the location of the customers of two merging service providers. We apply this technique in the context of the analysis of the competitive effects of a merger of veterinary hospitals. Next, we discuss an important tool in the FTC’s arsenal: rulemaking. We describe the benefits and costs of rulemaking, the rulemaking process, and the role of economic analysis in that process, and then highlight recent FTC rulemaking activities and the economic analysis of a proposed rulemaking that would ban employers from imposing non-compete clauses in employment contracts.</p>","PeriodicalId":47454,"journal":{"name":"Review of Industrial Organization","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138520283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Local Competition, Multimarket Contact, and Product Quality: Evidence From Internet Service Provision","authors":"Kyle Wilson","doi":"10.1007/s11151-023-09928-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-023-09928-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p>I investigate the effect of competition on quality in the internet service provision industry: I examine both local competition within markets and multimarket contact among firms across markets. This industry offers an ideal setting, as quality is both objective and measurable. I use data from speedtest.net from 2008 to 2014 to estimate a reduced-form model of the effects of local competition and multimarket contact on realized consumer download speeds. I find that increased multimarket contact leads to decreased download speeds, which is consistent with the mutual forbearance hypothesis. I also find that duopolies lead to faster download speeds than do monopolies, but that further increases in the number of competitors decrease speeds.\u0000</p>","PeriodicalId":47454,"journal":{"name":"Review of Industrial Organization","volume":"305 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138520278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ricardo D. Brito, Eduardo Correia de Souza, Rodrigo Moita
{"title":"Separating Vertical from Horizontal Differentiation","authors":"Ricardo D. Brito, Eduardo Correia de Souza, Rodrigo Moita","doi":"10.1007/s11151-023-09924-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-023-09924-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We demonstrate that R&D intensity is an appropriate measure of vertical differentiation, while the Rauch (J Int Econ 48:7–35, 1999) classification mainly captures horizontal differentiation. Product market characteristics vary considerably across R&D intensity-based “technology levels” of the OECD-STI taxonomy, as well as across categories of the Rauch classification. Both high technology and differentiated products display lower price elasticity of demand and longer quality ladders than do low technology and homogeneous products. However, variety proliferation decreases with the technology level and increases with the Rauch category, while price dispersion increases with technology but not with the Rauch. Additionally, Rauch categories do not differ in factor intensities, while higher tech industries are more capital intensive than lower tech ones.</p>","PeriodicalId":47454,"journal":{"name":"Review of Industrial Organization","volume":"292 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138520282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public Communication as a Mechanism for Collusion in the Broiler Industry","authors":"Qiwen Sheng, Tomislav Vukina","doi":"10.1007/s11151-023-09929-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-023-09929-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47454,"journal":{"name":"Review of Industrial Organization","volume":"19 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135043058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: The Industrial Organization of Food and Agriculture","authors":"James M. MacDonald","doi":"10.1007/s11151-023-09927-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-023-09927-9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47454,"journal":{"name":"Review of Industrial Organization","volume":"52 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135725114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Product Market Cooperation, Foreign Direct Investment and Consumer Welfare","authors":"Arijit Mukherjee, Uday Bhanu Sinha","doi":"10.1007/s11151-023-09925-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-023-09925-x","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Cooperation among rival firms raises serious skepticism among economists, policymakers, and legal experts, since it generally hurts consumers. We show that this may not be the case in an open economy with strategic foreign direct investment (FDI). Under Cournot competition, increased cooperation among firms reduces the domestic welfare, but it may benefit the consumers by attracting FDI. Under Bertrand competition with differentiated goods, increased cooperation may increase consumer surplus, and it may increase or decrease the domestic welfare by attracting FDI.","PeriodicalId":47454,"journal":{"name":"Review of Industrial Organization","volume":"259 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135273337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lauren Chenarides, Miguel I. Gómez, Timothy J. Richards, Koichi Yonezawa
{"title":"Retail Markups and Discount-Store Entry","authors":"Lauren Chenarides, Miguel I. Gómez, Timothy J. Richards, Koichi Yonezawa","doi":"10.1007/s11151-023-09926-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-023-09926-w","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract “Hard discounters” are retail formats that set retail food prices even lower than existing discount formats, such as Walmart and Target. Offering limited assortments and focusing on store-brands, these formats promise to change the competitive landscape of food retailing. In this paper, we study the effect of entry of one hard-discount format on markups earned by existing retail stores, focusing on several important grocery markets across the Eastern U.S. Focusing on establishment-level profitability, we estimate store-level markups using the production-side approach of De Loecker and Warzynski (Am Econ Rev 102(6):2437–2471). We find that hard-discounter entry reduced markups for incumbment retailers by 7.3% relative to markups in non-entry markets. These results indicate that the net effect of hard-discounter entry reduces the overall level of store profitability—despite the somewhat higher sales realized by incumbent retailers.","PeriodicalId":47454,"journal":{"name":"Review of Industrial Organization","volume":"90 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135513763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tina L. Saitone, K. Aleks Schaefer, Daniel Scheitrum, Shawn Arita, Vince Breneman, Rebecca Nemec Boehm, Josh G. Maples
{"title":"Consolidation and Concentration in U.S. Meat Processing: Updated Measures Using Plant-Level Data","authors":"Tina L. Saitone, K. Aleks Schaefer, Daniel Scheitrum, Shawn Arita, Vince Breneman, Rebecca Nemec Boehm, Josh G. Maples","doi":"10.1007/s11151-023-09923-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-023-09923-z","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47454,"journal":{"name":"Review of Industrial Organization","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134947437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Guojun He, Jeffrey T. LaFrance, Jeffrey M. Perloff, Richard Volpe
{"title":"How do Everyday-Low-Price Supermarkets Adjust Their Prices?","authors":"Guojun He, Jeffrey T. LaFrance, Jeffrey M. Perloff, Richard Volpe","doi":"10.1007/s11151-023-09922-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-023-09922-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47454,"journal":{"name":"Review of Industrial Organization","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135548093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}