Essays in industrial organization and consumer policy

This thesis contains three distinct, single-authored papers that are all related to the field of industrial organization. Chapter 2 proposes an empirical framework that allows to estimate the degree of industry competition and the degree of horizontal integration of merging firms. Thus, this chapter is also linked to the field of organizational economics. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze the effects of consumer biases on market outcomes and assess the effectiveness of specific consumer protection policies. These chapters also relate to the field of behavioral economics