The paper brings Friedman's (1971) collusive game to data and investigates whether the merger between the fifth and fourth largest brewer (G. Heileman and Stroh) of the US beer industry in the mid 1990's had a significant impact on the incentives to collude in the industry. It does so by firstly...

The three major infant formula manufacturers bid state by state to be the exclusive provider to poor families under the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, and all three compete for non-WIC customers at grocery stores. Previous studies explained the low WIC prices and the higher retail...

This paper employs a nation-wide sample of supermarket scanner data to estimate a large brandlevel demand system for beer in the U.S. Unlike previous studies, this work estimates the ownand cross-advertising elasticities in addition to price elasticities. The dimensionality problem is solved...

Private label products have been studied ex tensively and theoretical frameworks were developed to show private label products lend their retailers bargaining power over factory brands. Because of unobservable fact ory or wholesale prices empirical evidence has been lacking. This paper, using an...

The introduction of new products is an important method of competition in many markets. Towards understanding its impact on competition and welfare, this paper estimates the effects of Crystal Pepsi being introduced by PepsiCo. Estimating a structural model of the soft drink market, the...

The goal of this report is to provide the Illinois Livestock industry with an economic snapshot of the current state of the industry. The State’s livestock and meat and dairy processing sectors significantly contribute to the state’s economy in three important ways: 1) significant economic...

In some product categories, generic advertising is used to increase market demand of the category and at the same time brand advertising is used to entice consumers to choose the advertised brand over competing brands. This paper empirically investigates the optimal levels of brand and generic...

This article examines the impact of Wal-Mart Supercenters’ entry on incumbents’ pricing behavior and demand. Using a structural model and milk data from the Dallas/Fort Worth supermarket chains, empirical results show that an expansion of Supercenters caused incumbents to price milk...

Store brands are thought to improve a retailer's position relative to leading brand manufacturers and to reduce retail prices. Steiner (2004) offers a characterization of typical industry structures by considering the relationship between interbrand and intrabrand elasticities. We estimate a...

Consumers choose from among the varieties of two brands and an outside good using order statistics. We analytically derive demand functions conditional on their valuations of the varieties being distributed independently uniform. Based on this theory, we estimate a threeparameter empirical...