Alon Eizenberg

International Industrial Organization Conference | Industrial Organization Society

IO economists, the Call for Papers for the IIOC is out. It is May 3-5 in Boston. There are special sessions to showcase the work of grad students. Submit by Jan 31.

www.indorgsociety.org/conference

A map of US GDP growth by metro describing the previous data

Almost all major US metros have now seen output recover from COVID!

Here's how real GDP has changed since 2019 among the largest metros:

🗽NY +3.7%
📽️LA +3.5%
💨Chicago +1.2%
🌉SF +10.8%
🤠Dallas +12.7%
🌸DC +5.2%
🚀Houston +6%
🍀Boston +7.8%
🦦Seattle +10.6%
🍑Atlanta +5.9%

Join us tomorrow for the CEPR VIOS workshop

6 December 2023: Michael Dickstein (NYU Stern), Title: “Patient Costs and Physicians’ Information”, Discussant: Alon Eizenberg (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and CEPR) 

More info here:
cepr.org/events/event...

There are real, practical use cases for modern large neural network-based machine-learning models for:

1. regression and classification,
2. language interface to databases,
3. autocomplete on steroids, &
4. Highly verbal electronic-software pets.

But that does not mean that claims of grossly... 1/

Thanks Hannes!

Nonetheless I'd like to use this time to study how market power and tacit collusion interact with an inflationary environment.

THE END - thank you for your patience with my non-knowledge on how to make a thread on this platform

3. IO folk, myself included, helped push back against the seller's inflation story (aka greedflation). The narrative that market power is the cause of inflation simply does not pass the smell test. I'm glad we did. -->

What do you do when costs fall? Well, nothing. That is a wonderful focal point for a cartel to stick with. No reason to lower prices until somebody else does.

2. Price rigidity has many reasons and manifests itself in manners beyond Rockets & Feathers. -->

A few important clarifications and caveats: 1. Rockets & Feathers do not necessarily reflect a lack of competition. Could also result from information issues (e.g. Cabral & Fishman 2012). Nonetheless, tacit collusion remains an important explanation. -->

Instead, prices stabilize, which indeed brings down inflation. But under more competitive conditions, prices would fall back, at least partially, rather than just stabilize. Inflation would cool off faster, interest rates could be lower. -->

I'm talking about Rockets and Feathers. A refined statement would say: Big corporations jacked up prices when commodity prices were rising, we get that. But when the upstream cost pressures subside, prices do not go back down. -->

President Biden's statement that firms should lower prices because inflation is down caught much fire, and rightfully so. many problems there.

But there is an underlying core to this statement that we should take seriously. ->

I used to show a picture of my own baby doing grocery shopping with me, presumably to indicate first-hand institutional knowledge of Jerusalem supermarkets. It worked out ok.

Just published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a short descriptive chapter I co-authored with Andrew Abir and Eyal Argov: "Labour Market Tightness and Inflation in the Aftermath of Covid-19: The Case of Israel."

www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/b...

And Ilona is on the market this year! Hire her before your neighbour does! 👍

We tend to focus on the short-term trends, but it's worth taking a step back: Inflation has come down a *lot* from its peak. Headline now down to 3% y/y. Core at 3.5%. Those are still above the Fed's target and prepandemic levels, but it's a radically different story than a year ago.

Quick Stata tip: I've written a book that compiles 97 of my Stata tips.

You can download "Quick Stata Tips" and the companion .do file for free at toddrjones.com/quickstatati...

Synagoge Rykestr.

Today more than ever: shabbat shalom!

❤️

This was an amazing workshop. Thanks to the organizing team for putting it together!

Tommaso Valletti presenting Political Power - Market Power

Luise Eisfeld presenting Entry and Acquisitions in Software Markets

📉📈 Great first day at the UZH Market Power Workshop!📈📉

The program continues tomorrow with Bhattacharya, Eizenberg (@aloneizenberg.bsky.social), Pape and Remmy

And an exciting keynote by Nate Miller (@natehmiller.bsky.social) on
"Industrial Organisation and the Rise of Market Power"

@luisaguiarw and I (aka the Empirical IO group @UZH_ch) have had the great please of having @luiseeis.bsky.social and @aloneizenberg.bsky.social around for a pre-workshop lunch today.

We also got to chance to cheer for Alon as he turned 40 again this day today 🥳.

😂

Likewise and thanks so much for making this happen!

Headed to Zurich tonight for the UZH Market Power Workshop. Looking forward to see new and exciting work and to present our own work on Multimarket contact.

What many people don't know: recent decades have seen incredible reductions in poverty. The poverty rate has *never before* been this low in human history.

What new data is now revealing: after the setback from Covid, poverty reduction now continues!

#econsky
t.co/RJEfQE7PRm

Hey #econsky! Excited to share my first post here :)

I've prepared a guide demonstrating the R implementation of "significance bands for the local projections", as proposed in a recent paper by Inoue, Jordà, and Kuersteiner (2023). Comments are welcome!

raw.githack.com/itamarcaspi/...

Market power and climate policies are two market failures that interact in interesting ways.
F.ex., see this new REStud paper by Preonas: www.restud.com/market-power...

Increased academic leniency can harm attendance and "ultimately widen long-term achievement gaps."

Fascinating new paper (by Brooks Bowden, Viviana Rodriguez, @zachweingarten.bsky.social):

"The Unintended Consequences of Academic Leniency"

edworkingpapers.com/sites/defaul...

💡Quantile IV💡

Imagine that you are interested in estimating the effect of incarceration on labor earnings. You can use the random allocation of judges and the fact that they have different leniency rates to identify a weighted integral of Marginal Treatment Effects.

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