We use a data set consisting of a three year panel of prices from a sample of gasoline stations located in suburban Washington DC and a corresponding census of the region's stations to develop three new empirical findings about retail gasoline pricing. First, while average retail margins vary...

Econometrics played a major role in the investigation and litigation of the Federal Trade Commission¡¯s (FTC) successful challenge to the proposed merger between two office superstore chains, Staples and Office Depot. Our goal in writing this essay is to describe the econometric issues at...

This study measures the effects of the Marathon/Ashland Petroleum (MAP) joint venture on rack and retail reformulated (RFG) gasoline prices in the four cities where both firms sold RFG before the joint venture. MAP was an early transaction in the recent era of petroleum mergers and resulted in...

Many experts speculate that U.S. antitrust policy towards horizontal mergers has been too lenient. We estimate the price effects of Whirlpool's acquisition of Maytag to provide new evidence on this debate. We compare price changes in appliance markets most affected by the merger to markets where...

Many experts speculate that US antitrust policy towards horizontal mergers has been too lenient. We estimate the price effects of Whirlpool's acquisition of Maytag to provide new evidence on this debate. We compare price changes in appliance markets most affected by the merger to markets where...

On January 1, 1998 Marathon and Ashland combined their refining and marketing assets in a joint venture which was unchallenged by U.S. antitrust authorities. Because there were no divestitures, the transaction led to a significant increase in concentration in the wholesale and retail sale of...