The theoretical literature of industrial organization shows that the distances between consumers and firms have first-order implications for competitive outcomes whenever transportation costs are large. To assess these effects empirically, we develop a structural model of competition among...

We use Monte Carlo experiments to evaluate whether "upward pricing pressure" (UPP) accurately predicts the price effects of mergers, motivated by the observation that UPP is a restricted form of the first order approximation derived in Jaffe and Weyl (2013). Results indicate that UPP is quite...

We examine how forward contracts affect economic outcomes under generalized market structures. In the model, forward contracts discipline the exercise of market power by making profit less sensitive to changes in output. This impact is greatest in markets with intermediate levels of...

We develop an estimator for models of competition among spatially differentiated firms. In contrast to existing methods (e.g., Houde (2009)), the estimator has flexible data requirements and is implementable with data that are observed at any level of aggregation. Further, the estimator is the...

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...

We characterize the evolution of markups for consumer products in the United States from 2006 to 2019. We use detailed data on prices and quantities for products in more than 100 distinct product categories to estimate demand systems with flexible consumer preferences. We recover markups under...

Economists widely agree that, absent sufficient efficiencies or other offsetting factors, mergers that increase concentration substantially are likely to be anticompetitive. Further, holding everything else equal, the magnitude of anticompetitive effects tends to be larger, the larger is the...