시장 상황에서 관찰되는 역사의 지속성

Abstract

In this paper, I investigate whether history has persistent effect in shaping the market outcomes by using a unique dataset from U.S. restaurant industry. This paper addresses the question of persistence of history by utilizing the fact that different chain restaurants came to existence at different points in time, penetrating into the new market areas of the time where they faced less competition and expected to reap higher profit. It turns out that those chains that settled down to then-new market areas are quite resilient to the arrivals of later competitors, and I observe that different restaurants are available in areas where current market conditions are very similar, depending on who was available to enter at the early stage of the geographic market’s development. The evidences discussed in the paper suggest that history clearly matters in determining the identity of the chain restaurants currently available. One may argue that, as long as those different chains available in similar areas are close substitutes to one another, the welfare implication of history may not be too large. But at least, the size of the profit associated with who controls a certain market is certainly not negligible.