Research on low-income household food costs shows that the poor often have limited shopping opportunities and pay slightly higher prices for food. It is often hypothesized that higher prices are due, at least in part, to higher operating costs for stores that serve low-income households. This...

In this study we develop a model for pass-through behavior for two retail food items with different levels of processing, beef and bread, using 36 years of monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics price indices data (1972-2008). Through the use of a two-stage error correction model that allows for the...

This article focuses on quality adjustment of the U.S. Producer Price Index (PPI) for retail food stores. Within the retail trade sector, food stores make up 15.4% of the revenue generated in the sector. This article outlines methods of quality adjustment and applies a direct adjustment...

Empirically studying dynamic competition in oligopoly markets requires dealing with large states spaces and tackling difficult computational problems, while handling heterogeneity and multiple equilibria. In this paper, we discuss some of the ways recent work in Industrial Organization has dealt...

The ready-to-eat cereal industry is characterized by high concentration, high price-cost margins, large advertising to sales ratios, and numerous introductions of new products. Previous researchers have concluded that the ready-to-eat cereal industry is a classic example of an industry with...

We examine whether discretionary government grants influence where domestic and multinational firms locate new plants, and how the presence of agglomeration externalities interacts with these policy instruments. We find that a region's existing industrial structure has an effect on the location...

We analyse a puzzle in the UK corporation tax: by both historic and international standards corporation tax revenues have been high while the statutory rate has been low. Possible explanations include the following: changes in tax law that may have increased effective tax rates; other factors...

We investigate the geographic concentration and agglomeration of production activity in the UK at the four-digit industry level using a variety of measures. We relate these to comparable patterns in the US and France and find several similarities. We find that conditioning on industrial...

This paper analyses the development of taxes on corporate income in EU and G7 countries over the last two decades. We establish a number of stylized facts about their development. Tax-cutting and base-broadening reforms have had the effect that, on average across EU and G7 countries, effective...

This paper investigates a set of strategic decisions facing US firms. We develop a simple theoretical framework in which firms choose whether or not to serve a foreign market, and if so whether by exporting, or by becoming a multinational. The model is applied to a sample of US firms choosing...