Retail Mergers and Food Prices: Evidence from France

This paper analyzes the impact of a merger in the French supermarket industry on food prices. Using consumer panel data, we compare the changes in prices for merging and rival firms in affected and comparison markets. We use a novel definition of affected markets when some firms have a local pricing strategy and others a more centralized pricing strategy. We find that prices increase significantly following the merger, and that the merging firms lose market shares. For the rivals, the price increases are larger in local markets, in which concentration increased and differentiation changed after the merger.     

The workplace as a community: the case of British hotels

In this article the author describes workplace communities in British hotels and discusses the relationships between the workplace community and employees' subculture, family life and leisure patterns. He also discusses the role of the workplace community as an alternative to bureaucratic organisation and the consequences for people of working in a leisure context.     

An empirical investigation of the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination

Economic theory does not provide sharp predictions on the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination: if downstream cost differences exist, then discrimination shifts production inefficiently, toward high‐cost retailers, so a ban increases welfare; if differences in price elasticity of demand across retailers exist, discrimination may increase welfare if quantity sold increases, so a ban reduces welfare. Using retail prices and quantities of coffee brands sold by German retailers, I estimate a model of demand and supply and separate cost and demand differences. Simulating a ban on wholesale price discrimination has positive welfare effects in this market, and less if downstream cost differences shrink, or with less competition.     

Strategic information sharing between competing retailers in a supply chain with endogenous wholesale price

This paper introduces a new motivation for information sharing in decentralized supply chains—as a mechanism to achieve truthful information sharing and to reduce signaling costs. We study a two-echelon supply chain with one manufacturer selling a homogenous product to n price-setting competing retailers. Each retailer has access to private information about the potential market demand, and the retailers have an ex-ante incentive to share this information with each other and to conceal the information from the manufacturer. However, without a mechanism that induces the retailers to truthful information exchange as their strategic choice, no information can be exchanged via pure communication (cheap talk). To overcome this obstacle, two signaling games are analyzed: in the first game, information is shared truthfully among the retailers; in the second game, information is also shared truthfully with the manufacturer. We show that under some conditions sharing information with the manufacturer results in a higher profit for the retailers.     

Between gratitude and gratuity an analysis of tipping

The phenomenon of tipping is regarded in this article as representing a basic problem in many service situations: the need to reconcile the economic, social, and psychological elements of server-client interaction. Tipping is analyzed from three perspectives: economic, social, and social-psychological. It is demonstrated that economic exchange and social exchange rationales, while providing important insights into the phenomenon, cannot capture all its aspects. The prevalence of tipping in tourist situations is a case in point. It is shown that only the introduction of social psychological considerations into the analysis helps to account for tourist tipping. Several propositions for further studies of tipping are offered and the wider theoretical and practical significance of the phenomenon is pointed out.