Assortment decisions are key strategic instruments for firms responding to local market conditions. We assess this claim by studying the effect of a national merger between two large Dutch supermarket chains on prices and on the depth as well as composition of assortment. We adopt a...

We study the effect of a merger between two Dutch supermarket chains to assess its effect on the depth as well as composition of assortment. We adopt a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits local variation in the merger’s effects, controlling for selection on observables through a...

Commercial sector, during the times of centrally planned economy was particularly neglected in Poland, as in all Eastern European countries. Economic transformation and political changes in the country after 1989 induced the development of the commercial sector. The subjects of the research are...

Assortment decisions are key strategic instruments for firms responding to local market conditions. We assess this claim by studying the effect of a national merger between two large Dutch supermarket chains on prices and on the depth as well as composition of assortment. We adopt a...

We study the effect of a merger between two Dutch supermarket chains to assess its effect on the depth as well as composition of assortment. We adopt a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits local variation in the merger's effects, controlling for selection on observables through a...

Revisions incorporated into the Horizontal Merger Guidelines in 2010 claim that the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission consider anticompetitive effects to product “variety” when evaluating mergers. The Guidelines do not, however, explain the methodology or tools that can...

We study a model of collective reputation and use it to analyze the benefit of collective brands. Consumers form beliefs about the quality of an experience good that is produced by one firm that is part of a collective brand. Consumers' limited ability to distinguish among firms in the...

Clearinghouse models of online pricing - such as Varian (1980), Rosenthal (1980), Narasimhan (1988), and Baye-Morgan (2001) - view a price comparison site as an "information clearing-house" where shoppers and loyals obtain price and product information to make online purchases. These models...

Group buying events, in which the unit price for a good or service declines with higher number of customer sign ups, are increasingly becoming popular for retailing goods and services, especially in emerging markets. This paper theoretically and empirically studies consumer equilibrium, pricing,...

This paper studies unshrouding decisions in a framework similar to Gabaix and Laibson (2006), but considers an alternative unshrouding mechanism where the impact of advertising add-on information depends on the number of unshrouding firms. We show that shrouding becomes less prevalent as the...