When a competitor buys another competitor in a local food market, prices may increase because there is less competition. The antitrust laws are designed to prevent mergers that most likely will result in higher prices. Economists do three things to help legal authorities determine whether a...

I surveyed milk prices in 195 grocery stores in southern New England and neighboring areas of New York with four University of Connecticut graduate students two weeks ago. The average price for milk in Connecticut supermarkets was $3.05 per gallon. Yet dairy farmers are suffering because of the...

This paper develops an analysis of markets for differentiated products. It relies on the concept of latent separability for consumer preferences. As proposed by Blundell and Robin, latent separability assumes that purchased products are allocated in the production of latent intermediate...