with Patrick Bajari and Steve Tadelis, 2014. American Economic Review, 104(4): 1288-1319. Earlier version available as NBER Working Paper 12051.
Abstract: Procurement contracts are often renegotiated because of changes that are required after their execution. Using highway paving contracts we show that renegotiation imposes significant adaptation costs. Reduced form regressions suggest that bidders respond strategically to contractual incompleteness and that adaptation costs are an important determinant of their bids. A structural empirical model compares adaptation costs to bidder markups and shows that adaptation costs account for 7.5-14 percent of the winning bid. Markups from private information and market power, the focus of much of the auctions literature, are much smaller by comparison. Implications for government procurement are discussed.
with Paul Ellickson and Christopher Timmins, 2013. The RAND Journal of Economics, 44:169-193. Earlier version available as NBER Working Paper 15832.
Abstract: We measure the effects of chain economies, business stealing, and heterogeneous firms’ comparative advantages in the discount retail industry. Traditional entry models are ill suited for this high-dimensional problem of strategic interaction. Building upon recently developed profit inequality techniques, our model admits any number of potential rivals and stores per location, an endogenous distribution network, and unobserved (to the econometrician) location attributes that may cause firms to cluster their stores. In an application, we find that Wal-Mart benefits most from local chain economies, whereas Target shows a greater ability to respond to rival competition. Kmart exhibits neither of these strengths. We explore these results with counterfactual simulations highlighting these offsetting effects and find that local chain economies play an important role in securing Wal-Mart's industry leader status.