This paper presents empirical evidence that endogenous fixed costs play a central role in determining the equilibrium structure of the retail food industry. Using the framework developed in Sutton [Sutton, J. (1991). Sunk Cost and Market Structure: Price Competition, Advertising, and the Evolution of Concentration (MIT Press, Cambridge).], I construct a structural model of retail competition in...

Understanding the degree of price stickiness and the nature of price setting is necessary for analyzing the effects of monetary policy on economy. To the best of our knowledge, no comprehensive study has examined the degree of price stickiness in Iran yet. For this reason, we examine the basic features of retail price setting behavior using a large data set containing the micro data underly...

Interconnection pricing in network industries that discriminates between affiliated and unaffiliated consumers is a form of partial incompatibility. This paper measures the magnitude of the effects this incompatibility has on competition, welfare, and investment in the retail banking industry, where banks’ ATM networks are connected to one another and unaffiliated consumers face interconnection...

Widespread participation of retail electricity consumers in short-term wholesale electricity markets throughout the United States is rapidly becoming technologically feasible. A number of jurisdictions are installing or have installed interval meters for a large fraction or all of their retail customers. With this technology in place, the only remaining barrier is whether state regulators will ...