“Hard discounters” are retail formats that set retail food prices even lower than existing discount formats, such as Walmart and Target. Offering limited assortments and focusing on store-brands, these formats promise to change the competitive landscape of food retailing. In this paper, we study the effect of entry of one hard-discount format on markups earned by existing retail stores, focusing on several important grocery markets across the Eastern U.S. Focusing on establishment-level profitability, we estimate store-level markups using the production-side approach of De Loecker and Warzynski (Am Econ Rev 102(6):2437–2471). We find that hard-discounter entry reduced markups for incumbment retailers by 7.3% relative to markups in non-entry markets. These results indicate that the net effect of hard-discounter entry reduces the overall level of store profitability—despite the somewhat higher sales realized by incumbent retailers.

“硬折扣店”是指将食品零售价格设定得比现有折扣店（例如沃尔玛和塔吉特）更低的零售业态。这些业态提供有限的品种并专注于商店品牌，有望改变食品零售的竞争格局。在本文中，我们研究了进入一种硬折扣形式对现有零售商店赚取的加价的影响，重点关注美国东部的几个重要杂货市场。 De Loecker 和 Warzynski 的侧面方法（Am Econ Rev 102(6):2437–2471）。我们发现，相对于非进入市场的加价，硬折扣进入使现有零售商的加价降低了 7.3%。这些结果表明，尽管现有零售商实现了较高的销售额，但硬折扣进入的净效应降低了商店盈利能力的整体水平。