We discuss recent research on the growth of chains in the retail and service sectors, and
point out the role of franchising in these industries, using new data on franchising collected
by the US Census Bureau. We then discuss several topics that one can analyze with data on
chains, and highlight the advantages of using such data. Our hope is to entice other
researchers to consider chains, and franchised chains, as a context for their own empirical
research, and thus also improve our understanding of the sectors where these firms operate.