The Evolution of U.S. Retail Concentration
March 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-07
Abstract
Increases in national concentration have been a salient feature of industry dynamics in the U.S. and have contributed to concerns about increasing market power. Yet, local trends may be more informative about market power, particularly in the retail sector where consumers have traditionally shopped at nearby stores. We find that local concentration has increased almost in parallel with national concentration using novel Census data on product-level revenue for all U.S. retail stores. The increases in concentration are broad based, affecting most markets, products, and retail industries. We implement a new decomposition of the national Herfindahl Hirschman Index and show that despite similar trends, national and local concentration reflect different changes in the retail sector. The increase in national concentration comes from consumers in different markets increasingly buying from the same firms and does not reflect changes in local market power. We estimate a model of retail competition which links local concentration to markups. The model implies that the increase in local concentration explains one-third of the observed increase in markups.
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:
demand,
market,
sale,
commerce,
product,
price,
trend,
retailer,
revenue,
competitor,
consumer,
retail,
merchandise,
store
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identified to contain references to specific institutions, datasets, and other organizations.
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Metropolitan Statistical Area,
Standard Industrial Classification,
National Bureau of Economic Research,
Securities and Exchange Commission,
County Business Patterns,
National Establishment Time Series,
Federal Trade Commission,
Longitudinal Business Database,
Department of Agriculture,
Department of Justice,
University of Minnesota,
Census of Retail Trade,
Council of Economic Advisers,
North American Industry Classification System,
Current Employment Statistics,
Herfindahl Hirschman Index,
Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board,
Herfindahl-Hirschman,
State Energy Data System,
Federal Statistical Research Data Center
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