Pass-Through by Multi-Product Firms

© 2018, © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. How does cost pass-through to prices depend on the set of products a multi-product firm owns? Using a structural demand model for the Swedish beer market, we simulate equilibrium cost pass-through for varying counterfactual ownership patterns. We find that a firm with a larger number of products in its portfolio and a higher degree of substitutability among these products adopts a lower pass-through of costs. While the direction of results is robust, our simulations show that the muting effect on pass-through is limited when comparing pass-through by stand-alone firms to pass-through under the actual, moderately concentrated market structure.

Publication year:2018