This paper investigates the impact of corporate expansion in the alcohol retail industry on small-scale retailers. Our empirical approach exploits the timing of corporate entries across U.S. states that do not have a state monopoly to examine entry effects based on proximity to incumbent retailers. The analysis, drawing on a comprehensive dataset of U.S. alcohol retailers from 2000 to 2020, reveals that corporate entries within a 1-mile radius positively impact the employment and revenue of nearby small-scale retailers, with these effects intensifying over time and being more pronounced in metropolitan markets. Despite these localized impacts, the overall market structure and firm behavior remain largely unaffected.

Cotton warehouses face unique inventory management challenges. This research addresses this challenge by proposing innovative strategies to enhance warehouse efficiency. Three key objectives are addressed: modeling cotton bale movements, evaluating an alternative to the current bale handling process, and evaluating an alternative to the current cotton bale marketing system. Results reveal significant cost savings. Changing bale receiving and placement strategy by using gin codes yields a $499,000 per-cycle reduction for an Oklahoma cotton warehouse case. Altering order fulfillment techniques, such as grouping 30 orders, saves $34,000 per cycle. Implementing quality-based bale substitution leads to a $1.3 million saving per cycle.

This article investigates the short- and long-term costs of an extreme weather event on retail food prices and consumer expenditures. We utilize the 2011 severe peanut drought as a quasi-natural experiment and find that retail peanut butter prices increased 21.3% as a result of the drought-driven shock in farm peanut production and prices. Moreover, we identify long-term costs due to positive asymmetric price transmission as retail peanut butter prices returned to pre-shock levels much more slowly and remained on average 6.2% higher for 4 years after farm peanut prices returned to pre-shock levels. For consumers, the drought increased peanut butter costs, and the persistence of higher prices in peanut butter led to long-term consumer costs. Peanut butter expenditure on average increased by 4.8% post-shock, with lower-income households increasing expenditures even more. A simple calculation estimates that higher peanut butter prices inflicted a cost of $1.08 billion during the shock, and sticky post-shock peanut butter prices imposed a cost of $628 million to U.S. consumers.

We investigate incumbent brands’ response to entry and increased competition in a large retail setting. We extend the nonprice competition and manufacturer stocking literatures by examining if incumbent brands increase quality, specifically increasing the number of varieties (product-line length), in response to entry of a new local brand in the ice cream market. We use the entry of a new, local, super-premium ice cream brand in a large supermarket chain as a quasi-natural experiment and empirically examine if incumbent ice cream brands increased the product-line length in stores carrying the new brand. Using Poisson difference-in-differences estimators, we find that incumbent brands increased the number of varieties offered by 0.9 (3 percent) after the new brand's entry, with most of the responses coming from super-premium ice cream, which increased the number of varieties offered by 2.9 (12 percent) product choices. These findings contribute new insights into quality changes, manufacturer stocking decisions, and nonprice competition associated with entry of a local brand into the food retail sector.

While much is known about dyslexia in school-age children and adolescents, less is known about its effects on quality of life in adults. Using data from the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, we provide the first estimates of the monetary value of improving reading, speaking, and cognitive skills to dyslexic and nondyslexic adults. Using a stated-preference survey, we find that dyslexic and nondyslexic individuals value improvements in their skills in reading speed, reading aloud, pronunciation, memory, and information retrieval at about the same rate. Because dyslexics have lower self-reported levels on these skills, their total willingness to pay to achieve a high level of skill is substantially greater than for nondyslexics. However, dyslexic individuals’ willingness to pay (averaging $3000 for an improvement in all skills simultaneously) is small compared with the difference in earnings between dyslexic and nondyslexic adults. We estimate that dyslexic individuals earn 15% less per year (about $8000) than nondyslexic individuals. Although improvements in reading, speaking, and cognitive skills in adulthood are unlikely to eliminate the earnings difference that reflects differences in educational attainment and other factors, stated-preference estimates of the value of cognitive skills may substantially underestimate the value derived from effects on lifetime earnings and health.

This article utilizes the 2011 Nielsen scanner data for the Honolulu fresh tomato market to explore the existence of price premium for local food. Hedonic analysis is conducted to delineate the price impact of the local attribute. Contrary to the widely perceived local price premium in the consumer preference literature, mixed results of price premiums and discounts are discovered for local tomato products. Additional investigation suggests that the prices of local tomatoes are likely influenced by seasonal output fluctuation. The limited market distribution capacity facing local producers may have contributed further to the retail discounting.

This article examines the marketing and distribution of foreign fabric, predominantly English, in the northern sub-plateau of Spain at the beginning of the 18th century using information from a fiscal source. The official tax record used in this study was a specific and special tax levied on cloth imported from countries with which Spain was at war. The details of this tax shed more light on a hotly debated topic with respect to transport and networks in modern Spain and make it possible to analyze and quantify the physical volume as well as the value and the destination of textiles.