The Internet may significantly reduce search costs by enabling price comparisons on-line. This paper provides empirical evidence on how Internet comparison shopping sites affected the prices of life insurance in the 1990s. With micro data on individual insurance policies and with individual and...

We investigate learning by doing using detailed data from a major auto producer’s assembly plant. We focus on the acquisition, aggregation, transmission, and embodiment of the knowledge stock built through learning. We find that most knowledge was not retained by plant workers despite their...

This paper empirically investigates the possible market power effects of vertical integration proposed in the theoretical literature on vertical foreclosure. It uses a rich data set of cement and ready-mixed concrete plants that spans several decades to perform a detailed case study. There is...