Gasoline prices increased dramatically in the U.S. Midwest in the summer of 2000, generating allegations of collusion among gasoline marketers. We examine the causes of the price increase, and find no evidence to support the collusion story. Instead, a combination of industry characteristics and...

For the purpose of explaining interindustry variation in the geographic distribution of firms, we explore the impact of product heterogeneity on the incentives for firms to cluster in the presence of a ubiquitous "periphery" of stand-alone firms. Our analysis revolves around two counteracting...

This paper models the modern merger review process in which an enforcement agency, here the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), interacts with the acquiring firm to determine the outcome of antitrust regulation. Our empirical implementation of a game theoretic analysis tests whether decisions are...

Firms seeking to merge face antitrust scrutiny from either the Department of Justice (DOJ) or the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Unlike the DOJ, the FTC litigates its cases in front of its own administrative law judges (ALJs), and then hears the appeal itself, rather than using federal district...

<title>Abstract</title> <italic>This paper models the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) unilateral effects merger policy using a sample of 192 investigations undertaken between 1993 and 2010</italic>. <italic>Statistical analysis shows that the number of significant rivals represents a reasonable structural proxy for the FTC' merger...</italic>