In a paper in the March 2004 AER, Justine Hastings concludes that the acquisition of an independent gasoline retailer, Thrifty, by a vertically integrated firm, ARCO, is associated with sizable price increases at competing stations. To better understand the novel mechanism to which she...

Hypermarkets are large retail suppliers of general merchandise or grocery items that also sell gasoline, often at very low margins. Using panel data for 1998-2002, this paper estimates the impact of hypermarkets on average state-level retail gasoline prices. The empirical results suggest a...

In this chapter, we address three issues relating to vertical mergers and antitrust: (1) incorporating the elimination of double marginalization into the analysis of the likelihood of a unilateral price effect rather than treating it as a separate efficiencies defense; (2) recognizing, inter...