Item pricing laws (IPLs) require a price tag on every item sold by a retailer. We study IPLs and assess their efficiency by quantifying their costs and comparing them to previously documented benefits. On the cost side, we posit that IPLs should lead to higher prices because they increase the...

We examine seller strategies in 1177 Internet auctions on eBay, to understand the diversity of strategies used, and their impacts. Dimensions of strategic choice include the use of a ‘Buy it Now’ option, the level of the starting price, and the use of a secret reserve price. A major focus of...

This paper analyzes seller choices and outcomes in approximately 700 Internet auctions of a relatively homogeneous good. The ‘Buy it Now’ option allows the seller to convert the auction into a posted price market. We use a structural model to control for the conduct of the auction as well as...

This study examines spatial variation in the price and accessibility of fast food across a major urban area. We use novel data on the price of a representative fast food meal and the location of fast food restaurants belonging to one of three major chains in the District of Columbia and its...

This article presents a brief review of the literature on the effect of supermarkets on productivity, employment, the survival of small retailers, prices, and competition in retailing. The following stylized facts emerge: (1) the retail sector has undergone a major concentration around the...

This paper deals with the issue of transparency in the pricing process for motor fuels, vis-à-vis the collusion charges between oil companies (for which no evidence is found) and the «myth» of «one» national price for motor fuels. Such an approach ignores both the competition between oil...

This document is a supplement of the paper "Dynamic Spatial Competition Between Multi-Store Firms" by Aguirregabiria and Vicentini (2007). It describes in detail the library of programs and procedures, in GAUSS language, that is used in that paper. The program computes an equilibrium of a...

This paper examines the effect of information sharing on supply chain configuration where the market characterized by demand uncertainty. A dynamic multi-stage game theoretic model with incomplete information is employed to capture the sequence of events. Our supply chain consists of two...

Scrutinizing a state-dependent pricing model in the presence of menu costs and dynamic duopolistic interactions, this paper claims that the assumption about market structure is crucial for identifying menu costs for price changes. Prices in a dynamic duopoly market can be more rigid than those...

It is usually believed that higher competition, implying more active firms, benefits consumers. We show that this may not be the case in an industry with asymmetric cost firms. A rise in the number of more cost inefficient firms makes the consumers worse-off in the presence of a welfare...