Abstract
Many experts speculate that US 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 offered for sale fell.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 239-261 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | American Economic Journal: Economic Policy |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2013 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General Economics, Econometrics and Finance