Competitive industries respond to positive demand-side and negative supply-side shocks in predictable ways. Prices will rise and, under some conditions, margins along with them. Margins may rise because of supply shocks, but they do so in competitive markets without collusion among producers....

Motivated by recent trends in apps and electronic media, I study the pricing decision of a durable-goods monopolist to derive conditions under which freemium pricing is optimal. Under freemium pricing, the firm charges a price of zero for the durable good but offers optional micro-transactions...

A methodology is proposed to estimate structural models of product line competition. This methodology enables researchers to estimate demand systems accounting for the endogeneity of the mix of products available in each market, an issue which is typically ignored in the empirical literature. In...

We quantify the welfare effects of zone pricing, or setting common prices across distinct markets, in retail oligopoly. Although monopolists can only increase profits by price discriminating, this need not be true when firms face competition. With novel data covering the retail home improvement...

We quantify the welfare effects of zone pricing, or setting common prices across distinct markets, in retail oligopoly. Although monopolists can only increase profits by price discriminating, this need not be true when firms face competition. With novel data covering the retail home improvement...

This paper develops a new approach that combines firm margins, market-level industry data and a static demand model to construct sets containing unbiased estimates of long-run price elasticities for storable good industries. It obviates the need to solve the consumer's value function and can be...

We present evidence from 260,000 online auctions of second-hand cars to identify the impact of public reserve prices on auction outcomes. To establish causality, we exploit multiple discontinuities in the relationship between reserve prices and vehicle characteristics to present RD estimates of...

A large body of research has established that exporters do not fully adjust their prices across countries in response to exchange rate movements, but instead allow their markups to vary. But while markups are difficult to observe directly, we show in this paper that inventory-sales ratios...

During the recent period of economic crisis, many countries have introduced scrappage schemes to boost the sale and production of vehicles, particularly of vehicles designed to pollute less. In this paper, we analyze the impact of a particular scheme in Spain (Plan2000E) on vehicle prices and...

Using loan-level data on millions of used-car transactions across hundreds of lenders, westudy the consumer response to exogenous variation in credit terms. Borrowers offeredshorter maturity decrease expenditures enough to offset 60% to 90% of the monthlypayment increase. Most of this is driven...