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Measurement of Monopoly Behavior: An Application to the Cigarette Industry
Abstract
A simple scheme is proposed to measure monopoly pricing behavior. The coefficient of the tax rate term in a price equation identifies the ratio of price to marginal cost. No direct measurement of costs is required, so a major problem for other empirical studies of monopoly is avoided. Empirical results for cross-section time-series data support rejection of atomistic competition but also provide evidence against the operation of an effective cartel in the cigarette industry. The model represents an alternative interpretation of related results in a recent paper by Barzel. Application of the methodology to other markets is feasible.
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Cited by
Chapter 17 Empirical studies of industries with market power
Bresnahan, T. F. (1989) · Handbook of Industrial Organization · doi:10.1016/s1573-448x(89)02005-4 · Cited by 1,271
Chapter 29 The economics of smoking
Chaloupka, F. J., & Warner, K. E. (2000) · Handbook of Health Economics · doi:10.1016/s1574-0064(00)80042-6 · Cited by 398
Testing Static Oligopoly Models: Conduct and Cost in the Sugar Industry, 1890-1914
Genesove, D., & Mullin, W. P. (1998) · The RAND Journal of Economics · doi:10.2307/2555893 · Cited by 393
The Price Theory of Two-Sided Markets
Weyl, E. G. (2009) · doi:10.2139/ssrn.1324317 · Cited by 37
Metadata
- Authors
- Sumner, D. A.
- Venue
- Journal of Political Economy
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1981-10
- Volume
- 89
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1010-1019
- ISSN
- 0022-3808 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-534X
- OpenAlex
- W1987182230
- Cited by
- 162
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 3.59
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Measurement of Monopoly Behavior: An Application to the Cigarette Industry. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/261017
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- Sumner, D. A. (1981). Measurement of Monopoly Behavior: An Application to the Cigarette Industry. Journal of Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1086/261017
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
