The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) controls the purchase and sale of alcoholic beverages across the state and is legally mandated to charge a uniform 30% mark-up on all products. This paper investigates the welfare implications of this uniform markup. We show that consumption patterns...

Government often chooses simple rules to regulate industry even when firms and consumers are heterogeneous. We evaluate the implications of this practice in the context of alcohol pricing where the regulator uses a single markup rule that does not vary across products. We estimate an equilibrium...

We explore the sensitivity of the U.S. government's ongoing incentive auction to multi-license ownership by broadcasters. We document significant broadcast TV license purchases by private equity firms prior to the auction and perform a prospective analysis of the effect of ownership...

Both asymmetric information (AI) and divergent expectations (DE) theories offer possible explanations of the litigation puzzle. Under DE, cases proceed to trial when, by chance, the plaintiff is more optimistic than the defendant. As the fraction of cases tried (T) declines, this leads to a...

Recent literature notes that when quality is produced with fixed costs, a high quality firm can undercut its rival's prices and may find it profitable to invest more in quality as market size grows large. As a result, a market can remain concentrated even as it grows large. When quality is...

In theory, free entry can lead to social inefficiency. When new products are substitutes for existing products, the business stolen from incumbents places a wedge between private and social benefits of entry. The business stealing effect can be offset if entry reduces prices or increases...

Streaming music services have exploded in popularity in the past few years, variously raising optimism and concern about their impacts on recorded music revenue. On the one hand, streaming services allow sellers to engage in bundling with the promise of increasing revenues, profits, and consumer...

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board administers the purchase and sale of wine and spirits and is mandated to charge a uniform 30% markup on all products. We use an estimated discrete choice model of demand for spirits, together with information on wholesale prices, to assess the implications...