Replaced with revised version of paper 07/24/09.

In the past 15 years, industrial-organization economists have significantly expanded the range of algorithms for calculating welfare losses due to imperfect competition. We compare eleven empirical estimates of economic losses due to market power in 47 U.S. food manufacturing industries, almost...

This paper estimates the relationships between market structure and the Lerner index of monopoly constructed from price data on processed food products sold through grocery stores. A theoretical model of a differentiated oligopoly specifies two determinants of price-cost margins: the...

A growing body of empirical studies have been interpreted as support for a laissez-faire policy towards mergers. These "event studies" examine the reaction of stock market prices of firms that announce an agreement to merge. The type ~f reaction reveals whether a merger is motivated by a desire...

The consensus among experienced antitrust lawyers and from abstruse economic studies is that the great majority of cartels operate clandestinely their entire lives. John Connor (Purdue Univ.)