Econometric Methods in Staples

Orley Ashenfelter, David Ashmore, Jonathan Baker, Suzanne Gleason and Daniel Hosken
Additional contact information
David Ashmore: Ashenfelter and Ashmore
Jonathan Baker: American University
Suzanne Gleason: Trinity College
Daniel Hosken: Federal Trade Commission

No 9, Working Papers from Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section.

Abstract: Econometrics played a major role in the investigation and litigation of the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) successful challenge to the proposed merger between two office superstore chains, Staples and Office Depot. Our goal in writing this essay is to describe the econometric issues at stake in evaluating the FTC's central claim that the price charged by office supply superstores was related to the number and identity of superstore firms participating in the market. Similar statistical models were relied upon by the FTC and the merging firms to analyze pricing. Our discussion of these models highlights the advantages and disadvantages of alternative approaches to analyzing a panel data set: cross-sectional estimates versus fixed effects estimates. We also describe and evaluate modeling choices that appeared to have substantial influence on the empirical results.

Keywords: statistical models; cross-sectional estimates; fixed effect estimates; panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q19 Q2 Q20 Q21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-04
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://dataspace.princeton.edu/bitstream/88435/dsp016d56zw62f/1/486.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Internal Server Error

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pri:indrel:486

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bobray Bordelon ().