The Effect of Ownership Structure on Prices in Geographically Differentiated Industries

I analyze how ownership structure and market geography jointly influence fast food prices. I estimate a model of demand and supply that accounts for the market geography and run counterfactual experiments that demonstrate how mergers affect prices. I find that the impact of mergers can be large, that this impact decreases as the merging outlets are farther apart, that mergers among market leaders generally increase prices more than mergers among weaker firms, and that mergers can increase prices even if the outlets are so far apart that neither outletï¿•s presence affects prices at the other before the merger.