The Adoption of Offset Presses in the Daily Newspaper Industry in the United States

This paper shows that the move to offset printing from letterpress in the U.S. daily newspaper publishing industry was determined, in part, by the structure of the local market. Although in monopoly markets, low circulation papers were quicker to adopt than high circulation papers, the ranking was reversed within duopoly markets. In such markets, the smaller firms adopted four years later than the larger one did. This result is partially consistent with preemption models of adoption. Hazard analysis further shows that in markets in which one firm has exited, the remaining duopolist is less likely to adopt than otherwise, consistent with preemption, and at odds with a declining industry explanation. Further analysis shows that the adoption was determined, at least in part, at the firm rather than the newspaper level, although, on the whole, newspaper chains adopted neither earlier nor later than non-chain newspapers. Ceteris paribus, adoption occurred more quickly in non-industrial states.

Loss Aversion and Seller Behavior: Evidence from the Housing Market

Data from downtown Boston in the 1990s show that loss aversion determines seller behavior in the housing market. Condominium owners subject to nominal losses 1) set higher asking prices of 25-35 percent of the difference between the property's expected selling price and their original purchase price; 2) attain higher selling prices of 3-18 percent of that difference; and 3) exhibit a much lower sale hazard than other sellers. The list price results are twice as large for owner-occupants as investors, but hold for both. These findings are consistent with prospect theory and help explain the positive price-volume correlation in real estate markets.

Rules, Communication and Collusion: Narrative Evidence from the Sugar Institute Case

Detailed notes on weekly meetings of the sugar refining cartel show how communication helps firms collude, and so highlight the deficiencies in the current formal theory of collusion. The Sugar Institute did not fix prices or output. Prices were increased by homogenizing business practices to make price cutting more transparent. Meetings were used to interpret and adapt the agreement, coordinate on jointly profitable actions, ensure unilateral actions were not misconstrued as cheating, and determine whether cheating had occurred. In contrast to established theories, cheating did occur, but sparked only limited retaliation, partly due to the contractual relations with selling agents.

Predation and Its Rate of Return: The Sugar Industry, 1887-1914

We study entry into the American sugar refining industry before World War I. We show that the price wars following two major entry episodes were predatory. Our proof is twofold: by direct comparison of price to marginal cost, and by construction of predicted competitive price cost margins that we show to exceed observed margins. We argue that predation occurred only when the relative cost of it to the dominant firm was small, and that it was most probably used to deter future capacity additions. It was also used to lower the purchase price of preexisting firms after one entry episode.

Equity and Time to Sale in the Real Estate Market

Recent research has proposed a pro-cyclical link between sales volume and prices in the real estate market through changes in the equity of existing homeowners. This article uses data from the Boston condominium market to show that owners with high loan-to-value ratios take longer to sell their properties than owners with low loan-to- value ratios. Properties with high loan-to-value ratios are listed at higher asking prices; when sold, they receive higher prices than units with less debt. Together, these results are consistent with a search model in which owners 'constrained' by large amounts of debt set a higher reservation price than 'unconstrained' owners, accepting a lower probability of sale in exchange for a higher final sales price.

The Sugar Institute Learns to Organize Information Exchange

This paper describes information exchange under the Sugar Institute, the trade association of U.S. domestic sugar cane refiners, between 1928 and 1936. The Institute collected production and delivery data from the individual firms and returned it to them in aggregated form. Attempts to exchange sales data were stymied by the larger firms. Surprisingly, there is no indication of mis-reporting of statistics by Institute members, although statistics were, at times, withheld. The paper concentrates on the evolution of the Institute. Proposals for successor organizations show that a workable mechanism required greater discretion to the central authority and greater voting rights to the larger firms.

Reference Distorted Prices

I show that when consumers (mis)perceive prices relative to reference prices, budgets turn out to be soft, prices tend to be lower and the average quality of goods sold decreases. These observations provide explanations for decentralized purchase decisions, for people being happy with a purchase even when they have paid their evaluation, and for why trade might affect high quality local firms 'unfairly'