Local or national pricing: what consequences for merger control in the food retail sector ?

Política de precios local o nacional: ¿qué impacto tiene el control de las fusiones en el sector de la distribución?

Marie-Laure Allain, Claire Chambolle and Stéphane Turolla
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Claire Chambolle: ALISS - Alimentation et sciences sociales - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique

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Abstract: The food retail sector is characterized by highly localized competition among multi-market retailers. Multi-store retailers may either price-discriminate spatially (local pricing) or adopt a uniform pricing strategy among local markets. We analyze how this choice affects the effect of a merger on consumer surplus. We show that when one retailer adopts uniform pricing across stores, the anticompetitive effect of the merger on consumer welfare spreads on markets non directly affected by the merger. In addition, the effect of the merger on directly affected markets is enhanced when these markets are sufficiently more competitive than markets non directly affected by the merger. These results lead to reconsider the definition of relevant markets in merger control when one multi-market retailer uses uniform pricing.

Keywords: Mergers; Competition policy; Fusiones; Distribución; Política de competencia; Fusions; Distribution; Politique de la concurrence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03542125v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Revue Economique, 2016, 67 (HS1), pp.53-67. ⟨10.3917/reco.hs01.0053⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03542125

DOI: 10.3917/reco.hs01.0053

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