This paper studies how expected returns interact with product market competition. We present a model in which product market competition is jointly captured by the industry concentration and the average markup. We then provide empirical evidence consistent with three channels that explain the...

A rapidly growing literature has shown that market concentration among domestic firms has increased in the United States over the last three decades. Using confidential census data for the manufacturing sector, we show that typical measures of concentration, once adjusted for sales by foreign...

This paper uses newly available firm-level tax data to evaluate the market structure in South African manufacturing sectors in the period 2010-12. To describe the market structure we compute markups for South African manufacturing firms and concentration indexes for 4-digit manufacturing...

In this note, we investigate the causal link between market concentration and markups in a retail setting. We study the Washington retail cannabis industry, which features exogenous variation in market concentration that resulted from retail licenses being awarded via lotteries. We observe...

We examine local market concentration and markups in the United States cement industry over 1974-2016. We estimate a model in which buyers use a second-score auction to procure cement from spatially differentiated plants. The model matches aggregated outcomes in the data, and the implied...

The South African economy is generally understood to be characterised by high levels of product market concentration and high firm markups. This paper reviews the existing literature and discusses what can be learnt from new administrative firm-level panel data. I present new evidence on South...

We generalize the demand side of a Real Business Cycle model introducing non-homothetic preferences over differentiated final goods. Under monopolistic competition this generates variable markups that depend on the level of consumption. We estimate a flexible preference specification through...