Tag: Bureau of Economics

PUBLISHED AS: Alcohol, antitrust, and the 21st Amendment: An empirical examination of post and hold laws The Twenty-first Amendment repealed prohibition, but granted the states broad power to regulate...

This paper presents new evidence of asymmetric pass-through, the notion that upward cost shocks are passed through faster than downward cost shocks, in U.S. gasoline prices. Much of the extant...

Studies of gasoline prices in multiple countries have found a repeated sequence of asymmetric cycles where a sharp price increase is followed by gradual decreases. This price pattern is linked to...

We provide the first analysis of potential competition in the generic drug industry. Our identification strategy exploits a provision of the Hatch-Waxman Act that rewards 180 days of marketing...

Sunoco’s 2004 acquisition of El Paso’s, New Jersey refinery and Valero’s 2005 acquisition of Premcor’s Delaware refinery significantly consolidated refinery control in the U.S. Northeast. The Federal...

A use-or-lose provision requires firms to employ a certain minimum fraction of their productive capacity. Variants have been used by regulators in the airline, natural gas transmission, and electric...

Our paper contributes to the literature on the relationship between innovation and market power by considering how changes in the intensity of product market competition affect innovation when...

Economists at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) support the agency’'s competition and consumer protection missions. In this year'’s essay we discuss efforts at the FTC and elsewhere to examine...

Eight years have elapsed since the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) prevented the merger of the formerly number two and number three baby food manufacturers in the U.S. Since the abandoned merger, the...

Despite being a widely used tool in merger enforcement, there have been few studies of whether antitrust divestitures are successful. We help fill this void by conducting a study of the divestitures...

The Federal Trade Commission initiated a Hospital Merger Retrospective Project in 2002 to analyze the effects of consummated mergers. One of the mergers studied was the 1998 acquisition by New Hanover...

We provide an in-depth analysis of the price effects of two hospital mergers that occurred in the north shore suburbs of Chicago in early 2000: Evanston Northwestern Healthcare’s (ENH) purchase of...

This study examines accuracy in consumer credit reports using a nationally representative sample of consumers with credit histories. Participants in the study examined their credit reports from the...

We conduct a retrospective study of the Sutter-Summit hospital merger to assess whether antitrust enforcement in this matter was appropriate. This consummated merger combined two hospitals located...

Economics at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) supports both the competition and consumer protection missions of the agency. In this year’s essay we discuss competition activity with a summary of our...

We estimate the effect of education and student status on the propensity to smoke. Our estimation strategy accounts for the endogeneity of education by “differencing out” the impact of unobserved...