In the last two decades, U.S. policies have moved from the use of incentives to the use of sanctions to promote work effort in social programs. Surprisingly, except for anecdotes, there is very little systematic evidence of the extent to which sanctions applied to the abusive use of social...

In 1997, the US Federal Trade Commission challenged the proposed merger of two office supply superstores, Staples and Office Depot in US District Court. Both the government and merging parties presented econometric studies examining the merger's likely impact on consumer pricing, predicting a...

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...