The price effects of a large merger of manufacturers

Description

"Many experts speculate that U.S. antitrust policy towards horizontal mergers has been too lenient. We estimate the price effects of Whirlpool's acquisition of Maytag to provide new evidence on this debate. We compare price changes in appliance markets most affected by the merger to markets where concentration changed much less or not at all. We estimate price increases for dishwashers and relatively large price increases for clothes dryers, but no price effects for refrigerators or clothes washers. The combined firm's market share fell across all four affected categories and the number of distinct appliance products fell"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.

Subjects

Series Statement

• NBER working paper series -- working paper 17476
• Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 17476.

Links

• http://www.nber.org/papers/w17476