Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Concentration Increasing?

There have been reports that industry concentration has been rising in the US. If so, firms will tend to have more market power that allows them to set higher margins. If so, those lazy antitrusters need to wake up and protect competition.

But it all turns out how you define the market. As my students all know, markets can be defined in relation to three dimensions: product characteristics, level of geography, and unit of time. A new paper by Rossi-Hansberg, Sarte, and Trachter examines the data at a more local level. While national concentration measures are rising slightly, more local measures are declining. This is consistent with ever more competition (although there have been claims that product differentiation is increasing). 
Perhaps the antitrust bureaucrats can go back to their naps.

Hat tip: The Grumpy Economist

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