This dissertation consists of three chapters relating to various topics in empirical Industrial Organization. The first two chapters deal with the empirical treatment of sales in online markets. The third chapter explores the level of pass-through for taxes on soft drinks. In the first chapter...

Existing research on tournament-style contests suggests that mechanisms to sort contestants by ability level are unnecessary in the case of linear relative-performance contracts. This paper suggests that this result stems from uniform treatment of workers' marginal returns from effort, marginal...

This paper investigates the prevalence of slotting fees in organic packaged and prepared products, and identifies the factors that influence the relative size of slotting fees. Based on a 2009 survey of U.S. food retailers, we find that 31 percent of surveyed retailers accept slotting fees for...

We use a two-stage, sample selection model to investigate organic milk purchases using Neilsen’s Homescan data. In the first stage, households decide on a weekly basis to buy mainly organic milk or non-organic milk. Results from this stage show that higher income, better education, having...

Using Nielsen Homescan data set from 52 markets in the United States, this paper assesses the price interactions among the four fluid milk categories (organic private label, organic national brand, non-organic private label and non-organic national brand), how demographic variables and product...

My dissertation research is composed of three essays to investigate the role of procurement contracting, market structural features, and market participants¡¦ behavior as determinants of the implications of contracting for spot price determination, market segments, and welfare effects. A key...

Motivated by the problem of deer overabundance in many areas of the United States, this thesis investigates innovative incentive-compatible policy options to address the problem. Economists view deer populations as a renewable resource, a composite asset that provides both benefits and costs to...

Motivated by several contemporary problems existing in U.S. agriculture, this thesis investigates three particular issues concerning different aspects of agricultural contracting between growers and processors. Specifically, the first essay investigates the relationship between the use of...

The static production efficiency model and the dynamic duality model of intertemporal decision making using a parametric approach have been continuously developed but in separate directions. The parametric approach takes statistical noise into account, which can provide accurate measures in a...