We conduct a retrospective study of the Sutter-Summit hospital merger to assess whether antitrust enforcement in this matter was appropriate. This consummated merger combined two hospitals located close together in the Oakland-Berkeley region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The greater...

We estimate the effect of education and student status on the propensity to smoke. Our estimation strategy accounts for the endogeneity of education by "differencing out" the impact of unobserved characteristics correlated with educational attainment. This is accomplished by exploiting education...

In 2006, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) revised its longstanding Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulation for light trucks. Under the new regulation, each light truck's fuel economy target varies depending on the size of the truck. We show that under the...

Aggregate demand models typically assume that consumers choose between all available products. Since consumers may be unwilling to search across every store in a given market for a particular item, this assumption is problematic when product assortments vary across stores. Using supermarket...

Enforcement agencies have a relatively good understanding of how to measure the loss of price competition caused by merger. However, when firms compete in multiple dimensions, merger effects are not well understood. In this paper, we study mergers in industries where firms compete by setting...

Despite being a widely used tool in merger enforcement, there have been few studies of whether antitrust divestitures are successful. We help fill this void by conducting a study of the divestitures relating to Johnson & Johnson's $16.6 billion acquisition of Pfizer's consumer health division in...

In this essay, we describe antitrust analysis of horizontal mergers in U.S. retail markets. We begin by providing a brief overview of the economic and legal framework governing horizontal merger policy, and highlight key issues in analyzing retail mergers. Next, we discuss the changing legal...