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...

The welfare cost of imperfect competition in the product and labor market as well as distortionary taxation is quantified in a dynamic general equilibrium model parameterized to fit the U.S. economy. We find that the welfare cost of imperfect competition in the product market is 35.74 percent...

Since Telser (1960), there is a well-established argument that a competitive market will not provide service due to free-riding. We show that with search frictions, the market may well provide service if the cost of doing so is not too large. Any market equilibrium with service provision has two...

This article addresses developments in the literature on The Rise of Market Power. First, it summarizes research about the result of De Loecker 2020 that the sales-weighted average markup has increased in the United States. Second, it summarizes and evaluates a set of industry studies that...

Using granular data from the consumer goods industry, we study pricing and non-pricing effects of common ownership at the product level. We find positive elasticity of consumer goods prices to common ownership and that firms pass along price increases to consumers through the marginal cost...

Although recent international broadband penetration rankings have Congress concerned about U.S. broadband policy, these statistics should not play a large role in forming U.S. broadband policy, as they fail to take into account geographic factors, demographic factors and consumer preferences...