IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2006-231.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Barriers to Retail Competition and Prices: Evidence From Spain

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Willy A Hoffmaister

Abstract

Why do prices in Spain's regions fail to converge? The prime suspects for this puzzling result are differences in regional barriers to entry in retail distribution. This paper develops a Cournot-Nash model of imperfect competition to illustrate the effect of barriers on prices. A unique data set-derived from an extensive analysis of competition policies in Spain- provides evidence that barriers to entry increase regional prices. The evidence also suggests that, consistent with the model's predictions, barriers to entry raise prices up to a point, and thus indicate that barriers have a threshold effect on prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Willy A Hoffmaister, 2006. "Barriers to Retail Competition and Prices: Evidence From Spain," IMF Working Papers 2006/231, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2006/231
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=19870
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Olivier Blanchard & Francesco Giavazzi, 2003. "Macroeconomic Effects of Regulation and Deregulation in Goods and Labor Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 879-907.
    2. Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2003. "Globalization and global disinflation," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 77-112.
    3. Stephen G. Cecchetti & Nelson C. Mark & Robert J. Sonora, 2002. "Price Index Convergence Among United States Cities," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 43(4), pages 1081-1099, November.
    4. Klapper, Leora & Laeven, Luc & Rajan, Raghuram, 2006. "Entry regulation as a barrier to entrepreneurship," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 591-629, December.
    5. Simeon Djankov & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2002. "The Regulation of Entry," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 1-37.
    6. Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 1993. "A Simple Estimator of Cointegrating Vectors in Higher Order Integrated Systems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 783-820, July.
    7. Inderst, Roman & Irmen, Andreas, 2005. "Shopping hours and price competition," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(5), pages 1105-1124, July.
    8. Giuseppe Nicoletti & Stefano Scarpetta, 2003. "Regulation, productivity and growth: OECD evidence [‘A model of growth through creative destruction’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 18(36), pages 9-72.
    9. repec:bla:econom:v:66:y:1999:i:263:p:335-57 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Evans, Paul, 1998. "Using Panel Data to Evaluate Growth Theories," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(2), pages 295-306, May.
    11. Im, Kyung So & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Shin, Yongcheol, 2003. "Testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 53-74, July.
    12. Engel, Charles & Rogers, John H, 2001. "Violating the Law of One Price: Should We Make a Federal Case Out of It?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(1), pages 1-15, February.
    13. G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), 1995. "Handbook of International Economics," Handbook of International Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    14. Paul Cavelaars, 2003. "Does Competition Enhancement Have Permanent Inflation Effects?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 69-94, February.
    15. Marianne Bertrand & Francis Kramarz, 2002. "Does Entry Regulation Hinder Job Creation? Evidence from the French Retail Industry," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1369-1413.
    16. Hansen, Bruce E, 1996. "Inference When a Nuisance Parameter Is Not Identified under the Null Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(2), pages 413-430, March.
    17. Peter Pedroni, 1999. "Critical Values for Cointegration Tests in Heterogeneous Panels with Multiple Regressors," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 61(S1), pages 653-670, November.
    18. repec:bla:obuest:v:61:y:1999:i:0:p:631-52 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Maurice Obstfeld & Kenneth Rogoff, 2001. "The Six Major Puzzles in International Macroeconomics: Is There a Common Cause?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2000, Volume 15, pages 339-412, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Michele Cincera, 2004. "Impact of market entry and exit on EU productivity and growth performance," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/921, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    21. M. Hashem Pesaran, 2006. "Estimation and Inference in Large Heterogeneous Panels with a Multifactor Error Structure," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(4), pages 967-1012, July.
    22. Alberto Alesina & Silvia Ardagna & Giuseppe Nicoletti & Fabio Schiantarelli, 2005. "Regulation And Investment," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(4), pages 791-825, June.
    23. Andrews, Donald W K & Ploberger, Werner, 1994. "Optimal Tests When a Nuisance Parameter Is Present Only under the Alternative," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(6), pages 1383-1414, November.
    24. Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina & de la Rica, Sara, 2005. "Immigrants' Responsiveness to Labor Market Conditions and Its Implications on Regional Disparities: Evidence from Spain," IZA Discussion Papers 1557, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    25. Salvador Gil‐Pareja & Rafael Llorca‐Vivero & José A. Martínez‐Serrano & Josep Oliver‐Alonso, 2005. "The Border Effect in Spain," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(11), pages 1617-1631, November.
    26. Kenneth A. Froot & Michael Kim & Kenneth Rogoff, 2019. "The Law of One Price Over 700 Years," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 20(1), pages 1-35, May.
    27. repec:bla:obuest:v:61:y:1999:i:0:p:653-70 is not listed on IDEAS
    28. Peter Pedroni, 2001. "Purchasing Power Parity Tests In Cointegrated Panels," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(4), pages 727-731, November.
    29. Amuedo Dorantes, Catalina & De la Rica Goiricelaya, Sara, 2005. "Immigrants Responsiveness to Labor Market Conditions," DFAEII Working Papers 1988-088X, University of the Basque Country - Department of Foundations of Economic Analysis II.
    30. Emmanuel Dhyne & Luis J. Álvarez & Hervé Le Bihan & Giovanni Veronese & Daniel Dias & Johannes Hoffmann & Nicole Jonker & Patrick Lünnemann & Fabio Rumler & Jouko Vilmunen, 2005. "Price setting in the euro area: Some stylized facts from Individual Consumer Price Data," Working Paper Research 74, National Bank of Belgium.
    31. O'Connell, Paul G. J. & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2002. ""The bigger they are, the harder they fall": Retail price differences across U.S. cities," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 21-53, January.
    32. David C. Parsley & Shang-Jin Wei, 1996. "Convergence to the Law of One Price Without Trade Barriers or Currency Fluctuations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(4), pages 1211-1236.
    33. Ad van Riet & Moreno Roma, 2006. "Competition, productivity and prices in the euro area services sector," Occasional Paper Series 44, European Central Bank.
    34. Froot, Kenneth A. & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1995. "Perspectives on PPP and long-run real exchange rates," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 32, pages 1647-1688, Elsevier.
    35. Antolin, Pablo & Bover, Olympia, 1997. "Regional Migration in Spain: The Effect of Personal Characteristics and of Unemployment, Wage and House Price Differentials Using Pooled Cross-Sections," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 59(2), pages 215-235, May.
    36. Chen, Natalie, 2004. "The behaviour of relative prices in the European Union: A sectoral analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(6), pages 1257-1286, December.
    37. Preston R. Fee & Hugo M. Mialon & Michael A. Williams, 2004. "What Is a Barrier to Entry?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 461-465, May.
    38. John H. Rogers, 2001. "Price level convergence, relative prices, and inflation in Europe," International Finance Discussion Papers 699, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    39. G. S. Maddala & Shaowen Wu, 1999. "A Comparative Study of Unit Root Tests with Panel Data and a New Simple Test," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 61(S1), pages 631-652, November.
    40. Levin, Andrew & Lin, Chien-Fu & James Chu, Chia-Shang, 2002. "Unit root tests in panel data: asymptotic and finite-sample properties," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 1-24, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Orea, Luis, 2009. "Legal and political barriers to entry in the Spanish retail market: a frontier approach," Efficiency Series Papers 2009/03, University of Oviedo, Department of Economics, Oviedo Efficiency Group (OEG).
    2. Orea, Luis, 2009. "Entry efficiency and barriers to entry in the Spanish retail market," Efficiency Series Papers 2009/02, University of Oviedo, Department of Economics, Oviedo Efficiency Group (OEG).
    3. Luis Orea, 2010. "The effect of legal barriers to entry in the Spanish retail market: a local market approach," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 193(2), pages 49-74, June.
    4. Javier de la Ballina Ballina & Rodolfo Vázquez, 2015. "El papel de las bluelaws en los modelos de evolución de los for¬matos comerciales," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 213(2), pages 63-82, June.
    5. M.ª de los Llanos Matea & Juan S. Mora, 2009. "Developments in retail trade regulation in Spain and their macroeconomic implications," Working Papers 0908, Banco de España.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Josep LluIs Carrion-I-Silvestre & Tomas Del Barrio & Enrique Lopez-Bazo, 2004. "Evidence on the purchasing power parity in a panel of cities," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(9), pages 961-966.
    2. Sarno, Lucio & Taylor, Mark P. & Chowdhury, Ibrahim, 2004. "Nonlinear dynamics in deviations from the law of one price: a broad-based empirical study," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-25, February.
    3. Dierk Herzer, 2010. "The Long-Run Relationship between Outward FDI and Total Factor Productivity: Evidence for Developing Countries," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 199, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
    4. Jorge Carrera & Romain Restout, 2008. "Long Run Determinants of Real Exchange Rates in Latin America," Post-Print halshs-00276402, HAL.
    5. Imed Drine & Christophe Rault, 2008. "Purchasing Power Parity For Developing And Developed Countries. What Can We Learn From Non‐Stationary Panel Data Models?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(4), pages 752-773, September.
    6. Bernstein, Ronald & Madlener, Reinhard, 2011. "Responsiveness of Residential Electricity Demand in OECD Countries: A Panel Cointegation and Causality Analysis," FCN Working Papers 8/2011, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN).
    7. Fabiano Schivardi & Eliana Viviano, 2007. "Entry barriers in Italian retail trade," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 616, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    8. Das, Samarjit & Bhattacharya, Kaushik, 2004. "Price Convergence across Regions in India," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 1/2005, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    9. Olimpia Neagu, 2019. "The Link between Economic Complexity and Carbon Emissions in the European Union Countries: A Model Based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(17), pages 1-27, August.
    10. DavidC. Parsley & Shang-Jin Wei, 2007. "A Prism into the PPP Puzzles: The Micro-Foundations of Big Mac Real Exchange Rates," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(523), pages 1336-1356, October.
    11. Felipa de Mello-Sampayo & Sofia de Sousa-Vale, 2014. "Financing Health Care Expenditure in the OECD Countries: Evidence from a Heterogeneous, Cross-Sectional Dependent Panel," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 61(2), pages 207-225, March.
    12. Karmaker, Shamal Chandra & Hosan, Shahadat & Chapman, Andrew J. & Saha, Bidyut Baran, 2021. "The role of environmental taxes on technological innovation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    13. Christian Dreger & Dierk Herzer, 2013. "A further examination of the export-led growth hypothesis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 39-60, August.
    14. Ana Iregui & Jesús Otero, 2011. "Testing the law of one price in food markets: evidence for Colombia using disaggregated data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 269-284, April.
    15. Mónica Meireles & Margarita Robaina & Daniel Magueta, 2021. "The Effectiveness of Environmental Taxes in Reducing CO 2 Emissions in Passenger Vehicles: The Case of Mediterranean Countries," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-13, May.
    16. Herzer, Dierk & Vollmer, Sebastian, 2013. "Rising top incomes do not raise the tide," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 504-519.
    17. Nicolas Berman & Antoine Berthou, 2009. "Financial Market Imperfections and the Impact of Exchange Rate Movements on Exports," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 103-120, February.
    18. Coe, David T. & Helpman, Elhanan & Hoffmaister, Alexander W., 2009. "International R&D spillovers and institutions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 723-741, October.
    19. Robertson, Raymond & Kumar, Anil & Dutkowsky, Donald H., 2014. "Weak-form and strong-form purchasing power parity between the US and Mexico: A panel cointegration investigation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 241-262.
    20. Dreher, Axel & Krieger, Tim, 2004. "Do gasoline prices converge in a unified Europe with non-harmonized tax rates?," Arbeitspapiere der Nordakademie 2004-04, Nordakademie - Hochschule der Wirtschaft.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2006/231. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.