Check YellowPages.com? On Yellin’s first day on the job as an economist with the FTC, she was put on a team examining a proposed merger between the country’s second- and fourth-largest hardware store...

Check YellowPages.com? On Yellin’s first day on the job as an economist with the FTC, she was put on a team examining a proposed merger between the country’s second- and fourth-largest hardware store chains. Her job was to predict whether a merger would increase hardware prices. Her boss handed her some CDs with checkout scanner data from the second-largest chain. Each CD contained scanner data from one small town, listing the prices and quantities of hammers, wrenches, nuts, bolts, rakes, glue, drills, and hundreds of other hardware products. Her boss also gave her the Web address for YellowPages.com. How can she use the information in the discs and YellowPages.com to make a prediction?