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Full-Text Articles in Industrial Organization
Drilling In The Drought: The Industrial Organization Of Groundwater, Ujjayant N. Chakravorty, E. Somanathan
Drilling In The Drought: The Industrial Organization Of Groundwater, Ujjayant N. Chakravorty, E. Somanathan
Ujjayant Chakravorty
China and India together produce about half the world's rice and a third of the world's wheat, but production in both countries is heavily dependent on depleting groundwater resources. A large proportion of farmers buy and sell groundwater - the trading facilitated by small farm sizes and fragments land holdings. The economics of groundwater, when farm sizes are small, is little understood. This paper develops a simple, spatial model of the industrial organization of groundwater markets appropriate for smallholder agriculture. We show that if water is abundant, then equilibrium with free entry results in Bertrand competition, with water sellers charging …
Clean Air Regulation And Heterogeneity In Us Gasoline Prices, Ujjayant N. Chakravorty, Celine Nauges, Alban Thomas
Clean Air Regulation And Heterogeneity In Us Gasoline Prices, Ujjayant N. Chakravorty, Celine Nauges, Alban Thomas
Ujjayant Chakravorty
In order to improve public health in areas with air quality problems, the US Clean Air Act imposes a variety of federal regulations on gasoline, which have led to a proliferation of fuel blends known as ‘‘boutique fuels.’’ More than 45 fuel blends are sold nationwide. We examine the effects of this program on wholesale gasoline prices. The methodological innovation in this study is the use of a regulatory distance measure as a proxy for measuring market power that arises from product differentiation. We find that Clean Air regulation increases gasoline prices by increasing the cost of refining, but more …