State Casket Sales Restrictions: A Pointless Undertaking?
利用殡仪馆价格数据和经济普查数据，研究美国各州限制棺材销售渠道（仅允许持牌殡仪馆销售）对价格和收入的影响，发现取消限制后棺材降价但服务费几乎等额上涨，整体收入未降，支持单一垄断租金假说。
We utilize a new micro data set of prices of funeral goods and services at individual funeral homes, plus data from the Economic Census, to examine the effects of state regulations that restrict entry into the funeral goods market. In particular, some states have regulations that allow only licensed funeral homes to sell caskets, while others allow unlicensed retailers, such as Costco, to sell them. However, as caskets and funeral services are complements, generally purchased in one‐to‐one proportions, it is not a priori clear that casket sales restrictions can expand the rent extraction capabilities of licensed funeral homes. Our results suggest that when courts lift funeral goods sales restrictions, the prices of funeral goods fall but the prices of funeral services rise by nearly as much. Overall, our results support the one‐monopoly‐rent hypothesis; we do not find that, overall, funeral home revenues decline when restrictions on funeral goods sales are lifted.