Three Essays On Market Power And Consumer Welfare

This dissertation consists of three papers on quantifying the welfare impacts of firms' behavior concerning three topics in Industrial Organization. The first paper (Chapter 2) measures the effects of vertical product differentiation of public electric vehicle (EV) charging providers on market power and consumer surplus using a unique dataset on real-world EV charging data. The empirical evidence implies that charging network expansion and technology advancement by firms engaged in quality competition lead to opposite welfare impacts, such as service quality improvement and higher prices, but the net effect is significantly positive. The second paper (Chapter 3) estimates the cost pass-through rates of retail gasoline sellers by measuring the treatment effects of a temporary cut in fuel taxes using station-level panel data. The results show that pass-through rates are not uniform but positively associated with local market competition and that the pass-through heterogeneity affects the tax-cut policy impacts. The third paper (Chapter 4) examines whether Uber price discriminates based on consumers' reservation price across routes using fare data for trips from major airports (LAX, JFK, and SFO) to hotels. This work finds that Uber engages in third-degree price discrimination, raising travelers' welfare gain for most trips.