In this paper we investigate the size of markups for nationally branded products sold in the U.S. retail grocery industry. Using scanner data from a large Midwestern supermarket chain, we compute several measures of upper and lower bounds on markup ratios for over 230 nationally branded products...

Health care costs represent a nearly 18% of U.S. gross domestic product and 20% of government spending. While there is detailed information on where these health care dollars are spent, there is much less evidence on how this spending affects health. The research in Measuring and Modeling Health...

Despite its centrality to the topic, very little attention has been paid to the topic of price changes. Indeed, for the most part, organisations operate under the myth of costless price changes. This article broadens the definition of the costs of changing price and then presents strategic...

We study the price adjustment practices and provide quantitative measurement of the managerial and customer costs of price adjustment using data from a large U.S. industrial manufacturer and its customers. We find that price adjustment costs are a much more complex construct than the existing...

There has been increasing interest in understanding how firms undertake non-price adjustment activities, especially in situations where prices may be rigid despite changes in market conditions. Using scanner price data for over 4500 different food products from a large US supermarket chain, we...

A transaction cost approach is used to investigate a manufacturer's policy towards exclusive territory dealers who bootleg (sell across their assigned territories). We show that optimal enforcement policies will generally tolerate some level of bootlegging. This tolerance is a natural...

This paper investigates the use of high-frequency scanner data to construct price indexes. In the presence of inventory behavior, purchases and consumption by individuals differ over time. Cost-of-living indexes can still be constructed using data on purchases. For weekly data on canned tuna,...