There is great interest among policy makers in how to influence the behavior of supermarkets in ways that serve the interests of important groups in society, especially small farmers and the owners of traditional, small-scale food wholesale and retail facilities. Two broader issues are also...

The Massachusetts Woodlands Cooperative, LLC (MWC) is working to help members conduct sustainable forestry of the highest standards while increasing financial returns from harvest activities. The forests of Massachusetts, the 3rd most densely populated of the United States, are threatened....

Food product attributes related to geographical origins are a topical issue in global food trade. The provision of geographical labelling may occur through geographical indications under the mandated trade rules of the TRIPS Agreement, trademarks, or country-of-origin labelling. The overall...

CSA farms establish a loyal customer base and, potentially, market power. A new empirical industrial organization (NEIO) approach and survey data from Northeast CSA farms are used to determine whether CSA farms have market power and the extent to which they exercise their market power. Results...

Some consumers derive utility from using products produced with specific processes, such as environmentally friendly practices. Means of verifying these credence attributes, such as certification, are necessary for the market to function effectively. A substitute or complementary solution may...

We consider a model of vertical competition where downstream firms (retailers) purchase an upstream input from a monopolist and are able to differentiate from each other in terms of quality. Our primary focus is to study the effects of introducing a large retailer, such as a Wal-Mart...

This paper theoretically analyzes the role of reference prices on competition and welfare in a context of a circular city model with free entry and reference prices, in which paying market prices above a reference negatively affects the utility of consumers. Agents interact in a three-stage...

We investigate how costly acquisition and exchange of customer-specific information affects industry profit and consumer welfare. Consumers differ in their preferences for competing brands and in their switching costs between brands. Brand-producing firms use their acquired knowledge of...

We document the following stylized facts for the Mexican retail market for gasoline using data for 2018-2019: (1) consumer prices adjust slower than wholesale prices; (2) more competition, in the form of a higher density of stations, implies lower markups and lower prices; and (3) more...

This paper surveys a variety of topics related to network economics. Topics covered include: consumer demand under network effects, compatibility decisions and standardization, technology advances in network industries, two-sided markets, information networks and intellectual property, and...