This article considers whether generic advertising lowers the differentiation among competing brands of the same good. Analytical results show that if the benefits from generic advertising from increased demand are outweighed by the costs from lower product differentiation then high-quality...

This paper revisits the analysis of generic commodity advertising under product differentiation by Crespi and Marette. Crespi and Marette had shown that a dominant firm producing high-quality goods and facing a competitive fringe of lower quality producers could be harmed by a generic...

While the development of empirical models of seller conduct abound, arguably less attention has been paid to the development of empirical models of buyer conduct. This is especially problematic in studies of food and agricultural industries where high buyer concentration along the supply chain...

We develop an empirical methodology based upon multinomial probability models to estimate the magnitude of bid shading in cattle procurement in the Texas Panhandle region. The methodology works well in settings where data allow a good estimation of a bidder’s probability of winning, but the...

This paper explores the link between quality, cost and concentration. Using concentration and cost data and product quality indicators for 2,244 products in over eighty industries in 1997 and 2002 in the US, a two-stage, ordered probit, random effects estimation explores the impact of...

This paper examines the incentive of atomistic agricultural producers within a specific geographical region to differentiate and collectively market products. We develop a model that allows us to analyze the market and welfare effects of the main types of real-world producer organizations, using...