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...

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...