I quantify efficiencies that were created following a horizontal merger between Coca-Cola and Glaceau, the manufacturer of Vitaminwater and Smartwater, in the U.S. premium bottled water market. I estimate a structural demand and supply model where manufacturers choose advertising, product...

We build a model of firm entry and exit and show how returns to scale shape firm survival, the equilibrium productivity and size distributions and firm concentration. High productivity dispersion and high concentration ratios need not reflect inefficiencies when returns to scale are strongly...

This paper evaluates the recent literature claiming that the US economy has generally become less competitive causing the US economy to perform poorly and that lax antitrust policy is one important reason for the decline in economic performance. Although there certainly are empirical facts...

The UK and U.S. tobacco industries provide a particularly clean place to examine the impact of changes in market structure on firm conduct and productivity in a rapidly innovating industry. Both industries were competitive in the 1880s, and the U.S. appeared to have a slight lead resulting from...

The recent woes of the US manufacturing sector have prompted the search for an effective solution for its resuscitation. Such a plan can aid the big three automotive companies in regaining their market share. This article takes a holistic approach in addressing this issue and attempts to, at...

We build up from the plant level an “aggregate(d) Solow residual" by estimating every U.S. manufacturing plant's contribution to the change in aggregate final demand between 1976 and 1996. We decompose these contributions into plant-level resource reallocations and plant-level technical...

We investigate whether greater microeconomic flexibility facilitates the process of creative destruction in the context of new trade models with heterogeneous firms (Bernard et al., 2003 and Melitz, 2003). In these models, freer trade increases aggregate productivity because high-efficiency...

Incentive regulation is designed to improve productive efficiency, enhance service quality and consumer welfare, and reduce the costs of regulation. The issue that is considered here is whether incentive regulation in the form of a price cap applicable to interstate access service to local loops...

When focusing on business performance of a country, industry or an individual firm the performance of companies may be tracked using various measures. By simulating the behaviour of a simple firm, our model underlines that the choice of measurement unit determines what distortions we will face,...