This article considers the recent literature on firm markups in light of both new and classic work in the field of industrial organization. We detail the shortcomings of papers that rely on discredited approaches from the "structure-conduct-performance" literature. In contrast, papers based on production function estimation have made useful progress in measuring broad trends in markups. However, industries are so heterogeneous that careful industry-specific studies are also required, and sorely needed. Examples of such studies illustrate differing explanations for rising markups, including endogenous increases in fixed costs associated with lower marginal costs. In some industries there is evidence of price increases driven by mergers. To fully understand markups, we must eventually recover the key economic primitives of demand, marginal cost, and fixed and sunk costs. We end by discussing the various aspects of antitrust enforcement that may be of increasing importance regardless of the cause of increased markups.

中文翻译：

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增加标记很重要吗？经验产业组织的教训

本文根据产业组织领域的新著作和经典著作来研究有关企业加价的最新文献。我们详细介绍了依赖于“结构—行为—性能”文献中不可信方法的论文的缺点。相反，基于生产函数估计的论文在衡量标记的广泛趋势方面取得了有益的进展。然而，行业是如此多样化，以至于也需要认真研究特定行业的研究。这些研究的例子说明了关于加价的不同解释，包括固定成本的内生性增长和较低的边际成本。在某些行业中，有证据表明并购导致价格上涨。为了充分了解加价幅度，我们最终必须恢复需求的关键经济基本要素，边际成本，固定成本和沉没成本。最后，我们讨论了反托拉斯执法的各个方面，无论其加价幅度如何，这些方面都可能变得越来越重要。