We empirically study the market power of U.S. national brand manufacturers by estimating the size of markups for nationally branded products sold in the U.S. retail grocery industry. We use scanner data from a large Midwestern supermarket chain to compute several different measures of upper and...

We describe a multiproduct barter trading experiment in which students exchange real goods in an open market based on their own preferences. The experiment is designed for simulating a pure exchange market in order to demonstrate the role of money and its functions in real economies by showing...

We study the link between price points and price rigidity, using two datasets: weekly scanner data, and Internet data. We find that: “9” is the most frequent ending for the penny, dime, dollar and ten-dollar digits; the most common price changes are those that keep the price endings at...

Asymmetric pricing or asymmetric price adjustment is the phenomenon where prices rise more readily than they fall. We offer and provide empirical support for a new theory of asymmetric pricing in wholesale prices. Wholesale prices may adjust asymmetrically in the small but symmetrically in the...

A central benefit of manufacturers' sales reps is their ability to provide sellers with information about prospective buyers. Yet sales reps often selectively under-report this information, which is viewed as a major problem by sellers and academics alike. We feel this is only part of the story....