We study a longitudinal sample of over one million French workers and over 500,000 employing firms. Real total annual compensation per worker is decomposed into components related to observable characteristics, worker heterogeneity, firm heterogeneity and residual variation. Except for the...

We examine empirically returns to seniority in France and estimate cohort effects in both firm specific compensation policies and returns to job seniority. We demonstrate the biases in several estimators of returns to seniority and show that allowing firm specific compensation policies and...

I develop a model under which workers with different marginal productivities self-select into firms based on the firm's seniority reward policy. I show how this may bias upwards the estimates of returns to seniority in cross-sectional and even some longitudinal studies, when differences in...

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...