Market Structure and Price: Empirical Studies
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"Spatial Aspects of Retail Market Structure: Beef Prices Revisited," The
International Journal of Industrial Organization, (With Tamara Mahan '91),
11, 1993, 283-291.
Spatial retail markets with multiplant firms and conjectural variations
are analyzed in this paper. In this context, the interplay between commuting
characteristics and concentration is discussed, leading to an empirical
test for the effect of those variables on retail beef prices. Commuting
characteristics are found to have a significant effect on prices. This
suggests that a significant concentration/price relationship might emerge,
if retail markets were defined in the narrow way that the spatial retail
model suggests that they should be.
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"Spatial Aspects of Retail Market Structure: The BLS and ERS Data Revisited,"
(assisted by David Skeehan '92), Empirica, 22, 71-76, 1995.
This paper draws on the spatial model in Claycombe and Mahan (1993)
and the BLS data developed in Lamm (1981) to test for the significance
of spatial and concentration variables as determinants of retail prices.
Results strongly suggest that structure in narrow retail markets affects
price. Different results are found using the ERS data in Kaufman and Handy
(1989) , further fueling controversy there.
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"The Effects of Market Structure on Prices of Clothing and Household Furnishings,”
The International Journal of Industrial Organization, 18, 693-844, 2000,
assisted by David Skeehan '92.
In this paper prices of clothing and household furnishings are explained
using market concentration of department stores and commuting variables.
The concentration variable has a strong effect on prices of both product
types. The commuting variables only affect furnishings prices, a result
that is in keeping with expectations.
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Ongoing Research
"Spatial Aspects of Retail Market Structure in Gasoline Markets,"
assisted by Tolga Oktay '94, Barna Berenyi '00 and Erin Carter.
Descriptive Data for Variables