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Data and Code for: Oligopolistic Price Leadership and Mergers: The United States Beer Industry

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Nathan H Miller, Georgetown University; Gloria Sheu, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; Matthew C Weinberg, Ohio State University

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
replication			08/19/2021 01:28:PM

Project Citation:

Miller, Nathan H, Sheu, Gloria, and Weinberg, Matthew C. Data and Code for: Oligopolistic Price Leadership and Mergers: The United States Beer Industry. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2021. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-09-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/E140341V1

Project Description

Summary: We study a repeated game of price leadership in which a firm proposes supermarkups over Bertrand prices to a coalition of rivals. Supermarkups and marginal costs are recoverable from data on prices and quantities. In an application to the beer industry, we find that price leadership increases profit relative to Bertrand competition by 17% in fiscal years 2006 and 2007, and by 22% in 2010 and 2011, with the change mostly due to consolidation. We simulate two mergers, which relax incentive compatibility constraints and increase supermarkups. These coordinated effects arise even with efficiencies that offset price increases under Bertrand competition.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: price leadership; coordinated effects; mergers; market power

JEL Classification:
      K21 Antitrust Law
      L13 Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
      L41 Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
      L66 Food; Beverages; Cosmetics; Tobacco; Wine and Spirits

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Published Versions

V2 [2021-10-07]

V1 [2021-09-28]

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