​Abstract WP n.º 14:
The fast development of large retailing groups has raised two major issues in the literature. First, it is usually claimed that these groups have, through the increasing concentration of their demand in the supplying market, benefited from a substantial rent shift from suppliers. A second issue is whether this rent shift passes-through to final consumers, thus increasing consumer welfare. The literature is rather inconclusive on these issues and mostly on the buyer power of large retailing groups and its impact on suppliers. This paper aims to fill in this gap by tackling buyer power and pass-through departing from the supply-side of the market. We do so on the basis of an instrumental variables panel-based econometric approach applied to purchases and sales data specific to large retailing groups, over 16 quarters from 2000 to 2003, and disaggregated at the brand, product, and supplier levels. Results reveal that purchasing pools and vertical agreements lower large retailing groups’ acquisition prices and that these gains tend to pass-through to consumers. In parallel, additional findings suggest that these groups tend to increase their prices less than national trade.