This is the only chapter in the book that is primarily devoted to empirical work. It is a more research-oriented chapter than the remaining ones. For this reason, it can be omitted from courses that are relatively more strategy-oriented.
As in rest of the book, the focus is primarily on issues, rather than the literature. It should be noted, however, that there is a very extensive literature on the structure-performance relationship and on the empirical estimation of market power. Instructors interested in going deeper in these issues may want to consult the chapters by Schmalensee and Bresnahan in the Handbook of Industrial Organization. Martin's "Advanced Industrial Organization" also contains a good discussion of the empirical literature.
One possible assignment in courses that are research-oriented--and when students have a good knowledge of econometrics--is to perform some basic econometric analysis based on existing datasets. Some links to existing datasets may be found in the links section of this website.