This study analyzes supermarket firm prices to determine whether prices are related to market structure and whether the Demsetz quality critique is valid. Factor analysis is used to identify five service factors that are modeled with price as endogenous variables in a simultaneous equations...

This article reviews the legal standards and the economics of indirect purchaser cases. Drawn from recent cases on behalf of consumers in the ADM price fixing case, it presents cost pass through models for high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), one of the alleged price fixes in the wet corn milling...

Focusing on the interaction between national brands and private labels, this paper has two main empirical contributions: i) a simultaneous system of demand (share), price and expenditure equations is estimated, and ii) differences in the structure of the local geographic market are incorporated...

This paper reviews prior research by agricultural economists on the demand for food products using scanner data. Thereafter, a differentiated product's oligopoly model with Bertrand price competition is developed and used to specify brand level demand and oligopoly price reaction equations. The...

This paper applies the BLP approach to the demand for ready-to-eat cereals (RTECs) at the supermarket-chain level in Boston using IRI monthly data. The Random Coefficient Model is used to estimate the demand for 37 brands of RTECs at the leading supermarkets in the Boston area. The empirical...

This report analyzes the economic impact of price fixing in the wet corn milling industry on consumers in the State of Michigan. Two of the companies who produce citric acid have pleaded guilty to fixing its price. In this report we assume that price fixing also occurred among HFCS producers....

Formulating theoretical models inevitably requires various simplifications that assist in making analysis tractable and that facilitate deriving closed form solutions. While the strategic insights gained from theoretical models of market phenomena are often quite valuable, testing the...

This paper presents a comparative analysis of three different economic studies that played major roles in the policy debate over the Compact. It draws an important distinction between before-after and counterfactual impact analysis and highlights constraining assumptions in models. Over time the...