Since Hotelling's (1929) seminal work, economists have tried to understand how product differentiation affects price competition. I study the product location decisions, on a vertical characteristic space, of two sets of horizontal competitors when the inputs supplied by the "upstream" set (the...

This dissertation focuses on a phenomenon called appraisal bias in the residential mortgage market that stemmed from information asymmetry. It is composed of two essays, one theoretical and one empirical. The theoretical essay analyzes the existence of appraisal bias in a dynamic game of...

The authors develop a new economic framework for the empirical analysis of retail margins. This framework formalizes the role of distribution services as outputs of retail activities. Their main results are the following: the measures of outputs of retail activities identified in the data...