I model manufacturers competing through a retailer. I model two types of advertising that each firm can engage in: advertising that increases product differentiation and advertising that increases (possibly perceived) value of the product. While the two types of advertising result in...

The U.S. credit card market is highly concentrated and highly profitable, two facts which have drawn scrutiny of its competitive practices. I study competition in this market by analyzing how lenders target and acquire new customers using direct-mail, their principal acquisition channel. I find...

This paper establishes how the classical facts characterizing a failure of competition in credit card lending during the 1980s are largely reversed in the decades following. Between 1990 and 2008 lenders' mark-ups decreased by 35 percent, profits shrank by 32 percent relative the average in...

We study price competition in markets with a large number (in magnitude of hundreds or thousands) of potential competitors. We address two methodological challenges: simultaneity bias and high dimensionality. Simultaneity bias arises from joint determination of prices in competitive markets. We...