Based on the publicly available information on the data sources and methodology used by the Census Bureau to estimate e-commerce and physical retail sales, and based on detailed e-mail communications with the Census official responsible for the retail trade data, we found, in a version of this...

Among the most significant aspects of conducting a retail business are the costs, risks and liabilities associated with the retail site. Franchising injects a further level of complexity into the concept of a retailer trading from premises. The property interests in the retail site take many...

This paper examines vertical relationships in which a monopolistic upstream producer supplies a product through downstream distributors to consumers who may access multiple distributors (i.e., multi-homing). Given that there are multi-homing consumers, exclusive supply of a product induces more...

This paper surveys the recent literature on the Japanese distribution system to consider two propositions: first, that the system is inefficient, and second that prices of imported products tend to be higher in Japan than in other markets. Most of the literature demonstrates that the system is...

Digital disruption is a potent force. Advances in mobile technology and increasing use of social media have quickened the pace of customer adoption, giving rise to the age of digital disruption. It is important to note though that digital disruption is not a net negative force. For every...

Mission critical moats are one of the strongest forms of moats that we come across and also one of the least understood. There are four primary attributes to such moats, namely, product complexity, importance of reputation, low cost in relation to end product's total cost of production, and...

Something old and important is lost sight of in a case like Ohio v. American Express, the Supreme Court's recent adoption of "platform" or "two-sided market" theory in American antitrust, and in theoretical efforts like the one on which it is based. A rarely discussed idea built in to American...

The paper shows that taking inventory control out of the hands of competitive or exclusive retailers and assigning it to a manufacturer increases the value of a supply chain especially for goods whose demand is highly volatile. This is because doing so solves incentive distortions that arise...

I address the degree to which variation in exposure to e-commerce is associated with entry and exit in the retail industry at the county level. To measure exposure to e-commmerce, I rely on within-state variation in relative search frequency for the phrase “amazon prime” as reported by...

We analyze empirically the allocation of rights and monetary incentives in automobile franchise contracts. All of these contracts substantially restrict the decision rights of dealers and grant manufacturers extensive rights to specify and enforce dealers' duties. The allocation of decision...