Growing market concentration and changes in consumer welfare: The case of the U.S. commercial airline market

1990 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 321-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jutta M. Joesch ◽  
Cathleen D. Zick
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Welfare ◽  
Market Concentration ◽  
Commercial Airline ◽  
The U.S

scholarly journals Effects of Country of Origin Labeling in the U.S. Meat Industry with Imperfectly Competitive Processors

2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chanjin Chung ◽  
Tong Zhang ◽  
Derrell S. Peel
Keyword(s):  
Price Elasticity ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
Import Price ◽  
Consumer Welfare ◽  
Domestic Demand ◽  
Meat Industry ◽  
Equilibrium Displacement Model ◽  
Country Of Origin Labeling ◽  
Imperfectly Competitive ◽  
The U.S

The study examines the impacts of implementing mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) on producer and consumer welfare in the U.S. meat industry. The equilibrium displacement model developed in this study includes twenty-nine equations representing retail-, processing-, and farm-level equilibrium conditions for the beef, pork, and chicken industries. Unlike previous studies, the model allows trade between domestic- and foreign-origin products and considers the imperfectly competitive market structure of meat processers. Empirical results show that without a significant increase in domestic meat demand, producers are not expected to benefit from the mandatory COOL implementation. Results of a sensitivity analysis indicate that consumers tend to bear more COOL costs than producers, as the own-price elasticity becomes more inelastic, and that producers’ benefits increase as the elasticity of domestic demand becomes more elastic with respect to the price of imported products. The existence of market power in upstream and downstream markets of processors negatively affects both consumer and producer surplus. One implication of our findings is that U.S. beef and pork producers’ promotion and advertising programs would be successful in expanding domestic demand when the programs make the own-price elasticity of domestic demand more inelastic and the cross-price elasticity of domestic demand more elastic with respect to import price.

scholarly journals The Fall of the Labor Share and the Rise of Superstar Firms*

2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (2) ◽  
pp. 645-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Autor ◽  
David Dorn ◽  
Lawrence F Katz ◽  
Christina Patterson ◽  
John Van Reenen
Keyword(s):  
Value Added ◽  
The United States ◽  
Market Concentration ◽  
Technological Changes ◽  
Labor Share ◽  
Economic Census ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Labor's Share ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Number Of Firms

Abstract The fall of labor’s share of GDP in the United States and many other countries in recent decades is well documented but its causes remain uncertain. Existing empirical assessments typically rely on industry or macro data, obscuring heterogeneity among firms. In this article, we analyze micro panel data from the U.S. Economic Census since 1982 and document empirical patterns to assess a new interpretation of the fall in the labor share based on the rise of “superstar firms.” If globalization or technological changes push sales toward the most productive firms in each industry, product market concentration will rise as industries become increasingly dominated by superstar firms, which have high markups and a low labor share of value added. We empirically assess seven predictions of this hypothesis: (i) industry sales will increasingly concentrate in a small number of firms; (ii) industries where concentration rises most will have the largest declines in the labor share; (iii) the fall in the labor share will be driven largely by reallocation rather than a fall in the unweighted mean labor share across all firms; (iv) the between-firm reallocation component of the fall in the labor share will be greatest in the sectors with the largest increases in market concentration; (v) the industries that are becoming more concentrated will exhibit faster growth of productivity; (vi) the aggregate markup will rise more than the typical firm’s markup; and (vii) these patterns should be observed not only in U.S. firms but also internationally. We find support for all of these predictions.

THE IMPACT OF THE U.S. DEBIT-CARD INTERCHANGE FEE REGULATION ON CONSUMER WELFARE

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-67
Author(s):  
D. S. Evans ◽  
H. Chang ◽  
S. Joyce
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Welfare ◽  
Debit Card ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

scholarly journals Judicial Response to the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
Carl Shapiro ◽  
Howard Shelanski
Keyword(s):  
Federal Trade Commission ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Market Concentration ◽  
Horizontal Merger ◽  
Average Increase ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Merger Guidelines ◽  
Direct Competition ◽  
The Government ◽  
The U.S

AbstractWe study how the courts have responded to the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Looking at decided cases, we find that both the government and merging parties rely on the 2010 Guidelines in presenting their cases, each side respectively arguing that it should win if the court properly follows them . The 2010 Guidelines had the strongest effect on the case law in the area of unilateral effects, where a number of courts have embraced them in ways that clearly depart from earlier decisions. The case law now exhibits much greater receptivity to a government showing that the merger will lead to higher prices simply due to the loss of direct competition between the two merging firms. The courts also have followed the 2010 Guidelines by more willingly defining markets around targeted customers. We do not detect any effect on decided cases of the higher concentration thresholds found in the 2010 Guidelines. Both the average pre-merger level of market concentration and the average increase in market concentration alleged by the government in litigated cases to date declined after 2010 .

Audit Market Structure and Audit Pricing

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Daniel Eshleman ◽  
Bradley P. Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Audit Quality ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Market Concentration ◽  
First Year ◽  
Audit Pricing ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Audit Market ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
The U.S

SYNOPSIS Extant literature finds mixed evidence on the association between audit market concentration and audit fees. We re-examine this issue using a large sample of U.S. audit clients covering 90 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) spanning 2000–2013. We find that audit market concentration is associated with significantly higher audit fees, consistent with the concerns of regulators and managers. We also find that increases in audit market concentration are associated with fewer initial engagement fee discounts (i.e., reduced lowballing), particularly for non-Big 4 clients. We reconcile our findings with those of prior research and find that our divergent findings are attributable to controls for MSA fixed effects. In supplemental analyses, we find that audit market concentration is associated with higher audit quality. We also find that concentration is associated with higher audit quality for first-year engagements, but only if the auditor does not lowball on the engagement. Our results are relevant to the ongoing debate regarding the consequences of increased concentration within the U.S. audit market (GAO 2003, 2008). JEL Classifications: M41; M42; L13.

HARMFUL SIGNALS: CARTEL PROHIBITION AND OLIGOPOLY THEORY IN THE AGE OF MACHINE LEARNING

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
European Union ◽  
Consumer Welfare ◽  
Tacit Collusion ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Oligopoly Theory ◽  
Communicative Acts ◽  
Sherman Act ◽  
Learning Capabilities ◽  
The U.S

Abstract The traditional legal approach for distinguishing between illicit collusion and legitimate oligopoly conduct is to rely on criteria that relate to the means and form of how rivals interact, such as elements of “practical cooperation”, or on the finding of an anticompetitive intent. These criteria ultimately refer to the inner sphere of natural persons and its emanations in communicative acts. Some authors therefore conclude that the cartel prohibition of Article 101 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) or Section 1 of the U.S. Sherman Act is unable to capture collusion if it is achieved by autonomously acting computers relying on machine learning capabilities. It is instead suggested here to define collusion as parallel informational signals, which achieve a supracompetitive equilibrium, and to use the consumer welfare standard as a proxy for distinguishing between illicit collusion and legitimate oligopoly conduct. This approach is not tantamount to the idea of prohibiting tacit collusion as such. Rather, it is to check singular elements of communication, that is, “informational signals”, within an existing oligopolistic setting for their propensity to create consumer harm. This approach can help to close potential regulatory gaps currently associated with the surge of algorithmic pricing.

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