Francine
Lafontaine

William Davidson Professor,
Business Economics
and Public Policy

Ross School of Business
University of Michigan

PROFESSIONAL INFO

I am the William Davidson Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. I am also Professor of Economics (courtesy) at the University of Michigan's Department of Economics. You can find out more about me, including my contact information, on my faculty profile page.

From May 2021 to July 2022, I served as Interim Dean of the Ross School of Business.

From Fall 2014 to the end of 2015, I served as Director of the FTC's Bureau of Economics.

Here is my CV in PDF format.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I study Industrial Organization, Vertical Relationships, Contracting and Franchising, and Entrepreneurship. My research is mostly concerned with the application of advances in contract theory and vertical relationships to the analysis of franchising arrangements. I also study the effect of contracting practices on firm performance, as well as issues surrounding business creation and survival in retail and small-scale service industries more generally.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

On the Misuse of Regressions of Price on the HHI in Merger Review, (with Nathan Miller, Steven Berry, Fiona Scott Morton, Jonathan Baker, Timothy Bresnahan, Martin Gaynor, Richard Gilbert, George Hay, Ginger Jin, Bruce Kobayashi, James Levinsohn, Leslie Marx, John Mayo, Aviv Nevo, Ariel Pakes, Nancy Rose, Daniel Rubinfeld, Steven Salop, Marius Schwartz, Katja Seim, Carl Shapiro, Howard Shelanski, David Sibley, Andrew Sweeting, and Marta Wosinska), Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, 10(2): 249-259, 2022.
[Full Text]

The Recent Evolution of Physical Retail Markets: Online Retailing, Big Box Stores, and the Rise of Restaurants, (with Jagadeesh Sivadasan), in The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth, Michael J. Andrews, Aaron Chatterji, Josh Lerner, and Scott Stern (eds), University of Chicago Press, 2022.

Presumptions in Vertical Mergers: The Role of Evidence, (with Margaret E. Slade), Review of Industrial Organization, 59: 255-272, 2021.

Brighter Prospects? Assessing the Franchise Advantage using Census Data (with Marek Zapletal and Xu Zhang), Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 28(2): 175-197, 2019.

Investigating a Merger in the Pharmacy Benefit Management Industry: The Express Scripts Acquisition of Medco (2012) (with Christopher J. Metcalf, David R. Schmidt, and Brett W. Wendling), The Antitrust Revolution, 7th edition, John E. Kwoka, Lawrence J. White (eds), Oxford University Press, 2018.

Financial Constraints and Moral Hazard: The Case of Franchising (with Ying Fan and Kai-Uwe Kuhn), Journal of Political Economy, 125(6): 2082-2125, 2017.

The Quality of Institutions and Organizational Form Decisions: Evidence from Within the Firm (with Nathan Wilson and Rozenn Perrigot), Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 26(2): 375-402, 2017.

Price Delegation and Performance Pay: Evidence from Industrial Sales Forces (with Desmond Ho-Fu Lo, Wouter Dessein and Mrinal Ghosh), Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 32(3): 508-544, 2016.

Serial Entrepreneurship: Learning by Doing? (with Kathryn L. Shaw), Journal of Labor Economics, 34(S2): S217-S254, 2016.

Economics at the FTC: Fraud, Mergers and Exclusion (with David Balan, Patrick DeGraba, Patrick McAlvanah, Devesh Raval and David Schmidt), Review of Industrial Organization, 47(4): 371-398, 2015.

Do Large Retailers Pay Premium Wages? (with Brianna Cardiff-Hicks and Kathryn L. Shaw), Industrial Labor Relations Review, 68(3): 633-665, 2015.
[Full Text (PDF)] [data and code (14.3MB zip archive)]

Formula Pricing and Profit Sharing in Inter-Firm Contracts (with Roger Blair), Managerial and Decision Economics, Special Issue on Ronald Coase and the Theory of the Firm, Lowell Jacobsen (ed.) 36(1): 33-43, 2015.

Franchising and Exclusive Distribution: Adaptation and Antitrust (with Margaret Slade), in Oxford Handbook on International Antitrust Economics, Volume 2, Roger Blair and Daniel Sokol (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2015.

Incentive and Strategic Contracting: Implications for the Franchise Decision, (with Margaret E. Slade) in Game Theory and Business Applications, Second Edition, K. Chatterjee and W. Samuelson (eds.) Kluwer Academic Press, 2014.

Franchising: Directions for Future Research, International Journal of the Economics of Business, Special 20th Anniversary Issue on The Economics of Business: Perspectives on Research, H. E. Frech III and Eleanor J. Morgan editors, 21(1): 21-25, 2014.
[Full Text]

Too Far Away? The Effect of Distance to Headquarters on Business Establishment Performance (with Arturs Kalnins). 2013. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 5(3): 157-79.
[Full Text (PDF)] [data and code (145MB zip archive)] [Online Appendix (PDF)]

Organizational Form and Performance: Evidence from the Hotel Industry, (with Renáta Kosová and Rozenn Perrigot). 2013. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 95(4): 1303-1323
[Supplemental Appendix (pdf)]

Inter-Firm Contracts: The Evidence (with Margaret Slade), in Handbook of Organizational Economics, R. Gibbons and J. Roberts (eds.) Princeton University Press, 2013.

Using Revenue Sharing to Implement Flexible Prices: Evidence from Movie Exhibition Contracts (with Ricard Gil), Journal of Industrial Economics, 60 (2): 187-219, 2012.

Much Ado about Chains: A Research Agenda, (with Renáta Kosová), International Journal of Industrial Organization, 30: 303-308, 2012.

Understanding Franchising: A New Look at U.S. Franchisor Activities (with Renáta Kosová), Economies et Sociétés, série Dynamique Technologique et Organisation, no 13, 2011.

The Incentive and Selection Roles of Salesforce Compensation Contracts (with Desmond Ho- Fu Lo and Mrinal Ghosh), Journal of Marketing Research, 48 (4): 781-798, 2011.

Survival and Growth in Retail and Service Industries: Evidence from Franchised Chains (with Renáta Kosová), Journal of Industrial Economics, 58(3): 542-578, 2010.

Transaction Cost Economics and Vertical Market Restrictions-Evidence (with Margaret Slade), The Antitrust Bulletin, 55 (3), Fall 2010.

Markets: State Franchise Laws, Dealer Terminations, and the Auto Crisis (with Fiona Scott Morton), Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24 (3): 233-50, 2010.
[Full Text (PDF)]

Do Labor Market Rigidities Have Microeconomic Effects: Evidence from Within the Firm, (with Jagadeesh Sivadasan), American Economic Journal - Applied, 1 (2): 88-127, 2009.
[data and code (1.5MB zip archive)] [Additional Materials (PDF)]

The Evolution of Franchising and Franchise Contracts: Evidence from the United States, Entrepreneurial Business Law Journal, 3: 381-434, 2009.

Within-firm Labor Productivity across Countries: A Case Study (with Jagadeesh Sivadasan), in International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Multinational Firms: A Case-Based Approach, Richard Freeman and Kathryn L. Shaw ed., NBER and University of Chicago Press, 2009.
[Full Text (PDF)]

The Deregulation of International Trucking in the European Union: Form and Effect (with Laura Malaguzzi), Journal of Regulatory Economics, 35: 19-44, 2009.

Exclusive contracts and vertical restraints : empirical evidence and public policy (with Margaret Slade) in Handbook of Antitrust Economics, Paolo Buccirossi (ed.) Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008.

Vertical Integration and Firm Boundaries: The Evidence (with Margaret Slade), Journal of Economic Literature, 45: 629-685, 2007.

The Economics of Franchising (with Roger Blair), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. A paperback edition, with new preface by the authors, was released in 2010.
[Amazon]

Franchise Contracting and Organization, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2005. (Editor)
[Amazon]

Targeting Managerial Control: Evidence from Franchising (with Kathryn L. Shaw), RAND Journal of Economics, 36, 2005, 131-150.

Multi-Unit Ownership in Franchising: Evidence from the Fast-food Industry in Texas (with Arturs Kalnins), RAND Journal of Economics, 35, 2004, 747-761.
[Full Text (PDF)]

Incentive Contracting and the Franchise Decision (with Margaret Slade), in Advances in Business Applications of Game Theory, K. Chatterjee and W. Samuelson (eds.), Kluwer Academic Press, 2001.

Franchising or Corporate Ownership: The Effect on Price Dispersion, The Journal of Business Venturing, 14, 1999, 17-34.

Retail Contracting: Theory and Practice" (with Margaret Slade), Journal of Industrial Economics, 45, 1997, 1-25.

Double-Sided Moral Hazard and the Nature of Share Contracts (with Sugato Bhattacharyya), RAND Journal of Economics, 26, 1995, 761-781.
[Derivations (PDF)]

The Role of Risk in Franchising (with Sugato Bhattacharyya), Journal of Corporate Finance: Contracting, Governance, and Organization, 2, 1995, 39-74.

Costs of Control: The Source of Economic Rents for McDonald's Franchisees (with Patrick J. Kaufmann), Journal of Law and Economics, October 1994, 417-453.

Contractual Arrangements as Signaling Devices: Evidence from Franchising, Journal of Law, Economics & Organizations, 9, 1993, 256-289.

Agency Theory and Franchising: Some Empirical Results, RAND Journal of Economics, 23, 1992, 263-283.