IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ioe/doctra/346.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Prices and Market Structure: An Empirical Analysis of the Supermarket Industry in Chile

Author

Listed:
  • Loreto Lira
  • Magdalena Ugarte
  • Rodrigo Vergara.

    (Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.)

Abstract

This paper investigates empirically the relationship between market structure and consumer prices in the supermarket industry in Chile. A panel of monthly data from 16 cities in the period January 1998–September 2006 was used. It was found that the more concentrated the industry is in a city, the higher the prices, while the participation of major national chains in cities tends to lower prices. Moreover, the dominant local chain was found to behave differently depending on whether or not one of the national chains was present in the city. Finally, we find that prices rise when a national chain acquires another chain and both were previously in a city (inmerge) while if only one of the two was present (outmerge), prices fall.

Suggested Citation

  • Loreto Lira & Magdalena Ugarte & Rodrigo Vergara., 2008. "Prices and Market Structure: An Empirical Analysis of the Supermarket Industry in Chile," Documentos de Trabajo 346, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
  • Handle: RePEc:ioe:doctra:346
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.economia.uc.cl/docs/doctra/dt-346.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Holmes, Thomas J, 2001. "Bar Codes Lead to Frequent Deliveries and Superstores," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(4), pages 708-725, Winter.
    2. repec:bla:scandj:v:104:y:2002:i:4:p:547-66 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Demsetz, Harold, 1973. "Industry Structure, Market Rivalry, and Public Policy," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(1), pages 1-9, April.
    4. C.J. Krizan & John Haltiwanger & Lucia Foster, 2002. "The Link Between Aggregate and Micro Productivity Growth: Evidence from Retail Trade," Working Papers 02-18, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    5. Leonard I. Nakamura, 1997. "Is the U.S. economy really growing too slowly?," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Mar, pages 3-14.
    6. Loreto Lira & Rosario Rivero & Rodrigo Vergara, 2007. "Entry and Prices: Evidence from the Supermarket Sector," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 31(4), pages 237-260, December.
    7. Dario Focarelli & Fabio Panetta, 2003. "Are Mergers Beneficial to Consumers? Evidence from the Market for Bank Deposits," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1152-1172, September.
    8. Marcus Asplund & Richard Friberg, 2002. "Food Prices and Market Structure in Sweden," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 104(4), pages 547-566, December.
    9. Khanna, Naveen & Tice, Sheri, 2000. "Strategic Responses of Incumbents to New Entry: The Effect of Ownership Structure, Capital Structure, and Focus," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 13(3), pages 749-779.
    10. John G. Fernald & Shanthi Ramnath, 2004. "The acceleration in U.S. total productivity after 1995: the role of information technology," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 28(Q I), pages 52-67.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gastón Chaumont & Miguel Fuentes & Felipe Labbé & Alberto Naudon, 2011. "A Reassessment of Flexible Price Evidence Using Scanner Data: Evidence from an Emerging Economy," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 641, Central Bank of Chile.
    2. Caglayan, Mustafa & Filiztekin, Alpay, 2015. "Price dynamics and market segmentation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 94-97.
    3. Bykadorov Igor, 2010. "Product Diversity in a Vertical Distribution Channel under Monopolistic Competition," EERC Working Paper Series 10/03e, EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS.
    4. Koski, Heli, 2018. "How Do Competition Policy and Data Brokers Shape Product Market Competition?," ETLA Working Papers 61, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    5. Gastón Chaumont & Miguel Fuentes & Felipe Labbé & Alberto Naudon, 2011. "Dinámica de Precios en Chile: Evidencia con datos de Supermercados," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 642, Central Bank of Chile.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Emek Basker, 2012. "Raising the Barcode Scanner: Technology and Productivity in the Retail Sector," NBER Chapters,in: Standards, Patents and Innovations National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Emek Basker, 2012. "Raising the Barcode Scanner: Technology and Productivity in the Retail Sector," NBER Chapters, in: Standards, Patents and Innovations, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Marie-Laure Allain & Claire Chambolle & Stéphane Turolla & Sofia Villas-Boas, 2013. "The Impact of Retail Mergers on Food Prices: Evidence from France," Working Papers hal-00920460, HAL.
    4. Emek Basker & Timothy Simcoe, 2021. "Upstream, Downstream: Diffusion and Impacts of the Universal Product Code," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(4), pages 1252-1286.
    5. Jonathan Beck & Michal Grajek & Christian Wey, 2005. "Hypermarket Competition and the Diffusion of Retail Checkout Barcode Scanning," CIG Working Papers SP II 2005-19, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).
    6. Emek Basker, 2015. "Change at the Checkout: Tracing the Impact of a Process Innovation," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(2), pages 339-370, June.
    7. Alimov, Azizjon, 2016. "Product market effects of real estate collateral," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 75-92.
    8. De Bonis, Riccardo & Marinelli, Giuseppe & Vercelli, Francesco, 2018. "Playing yo-yo with bank competition: New evidence from 1890 to 2014," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 134-151.
    9. Marie-Laure Allain & Claire Chambolle & Stéphane Turolla & Sofia B. Villas-Boas, 2017. "Retail Mergers and Food Prices: Evidence from France," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(3), pages 469-509, September.
    10. Ciravegna, Luciano & Brenes, Esteban R., 2016. "Learning to become a high reliability organization in the food retail business," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 4499-4506.
    11. Christos Genakos & Tommaso Valletti & Frank Verboven, 2018. "Evaluating market consolidation in mobile communications," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 33(93), pages 45-100.
    12. Otchere, Isaac & Abukari, Kobana, 2020. "Are super stock exchange mergers motivated by efficiency or market power gains?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    13. Díaz, Fernando & Galetovic, Alexander & Muñoz, Roberto & Tapia, Jocelyn, 2024. "Unraveling the price-concentration relationship: The Role of national distribution centers in Chilean supermarket industry consolidation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    14. Zipitría, Leandro, 2011. "Impacto económico del Supermercadismo [The Economics of Supermarkets: A Brief Literature Review]," MPRA Paper 28419, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Kwon, Spencer Y. & Ma, Yueran & Zimmermann, Kaspar, 2022. "100 years of rising corporate concentration," SAFE Working Paper Series 359, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    16. Brenes, Esteban R. & Ciravegna, Luciano & Montoya, Daniel, 2015. "Super Selectos: Winning the war against multinational retail chains," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 216-224.
    17. Jiang, Fuxiu & Kim, Kenneth A. & Nofsinger, John R. & Zhu, Bing, 2015. "Product market competition and corporate investment: Evidence from China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 196-210.
    18. Emek Basker & Pham Hoang Van, 2005. "Putting a Smiley Face on the Dragon: Wal-Mart as Catalyst to U.S.-China Trade," Working Papers 0506, Department of Economics, University of Missouri, revised 07 Oct 2005.
    19. Richard Volpe, 2014. "Supercenters, Unionized Labor, and Performance in Food Retail," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 325-355, April.
    20. Jonathan Beck & Michal Grajek & Christian Wey, 2011. "Estimating level effects in diffusion of a new technology: barcode scanning at the checkout counter," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(14), pages 1737-1748.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Prices; retail; market structure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ioe:doctra:346. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jaime Casassus (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iepuccl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.