Dear colleagues, in the name of the Department of Economics, I cordially invite you to our research seminar our next speaker, 2nd of June, 2021, 4pm: Matthew Backus (Columbia University Graduate School of Business) https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/mrb/ <https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/mrb/> Common Ownership and Competition in the Ready-To-Eat Cereal Industry http://www.econ.jku.at/t3/veranstaltungen/research_seminar/papers/backus.pdf <http://www.econ.jku.at/t3/veranstaltungen/research_seminar/papers/backus.pdf> Abstract: Models of firm conduct are the cornerstone of both theoretical and empirical work in industrial organization. A recent contribution (Berry and Haile, 2014) has suggested the use of exclusion restrictions to test alternative conduct models. We propose a pairwise testing procedure based on this idea and show that the power of the test to discriminate between models is tied to the formulation of those restrictions as moments and how they reflect the nonlinearity of equilibrium markups. We apply this test to the ready-to-eat cereal market using detailed scanner and consumer data to evaluate the “common ownership” hypothesis, which has received significant attention. Although we show that the potential magnitude of common ownership effects would be large, our test finds that standard own-firm profit maximization is more consistent with the data. Matt is Associate Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the Economics Department at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he focused on topics in industrial organization. His research interests include the determinants of firm-level productivity, estimation of consumer demand using data from auction-based marketplaces, and the role of cheap-talk communication in bargaining. Selected publications: • Expectation, Disappointment, and Exit: Evidence on Reference Point Formation from an Online Marketplace, with Thomas Blake, Dimitriy Masterov, and Steven Tadelis, Journal of the European Economic Association, accepted • Common Ownership in America: 1980–2017, with Chris Conlon and Michael Sinkinson, AEJ: Micro, forthcoming • Why is Productivity Correlated with Competition? Econometrica, Vol. 88 Issue 6, November 2020, pp. 2415–2444 • Sequential Bargaining in the Field: Evidence from Millions of Online Bargaining Interactions, with Thomas Blake, Brad Larsen, and Steven Tadelis, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 135 Issue 3, August 2020, pp. 1319 – 1361 • The Empirical Content of Cheap-Talk Signaling: An Application to Bargaining, with Tom Blake and Steven Tadelis, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 127 Issue 4, August 2019, pp. 1599 – 1628 In the media, e.g., https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/index-crazed-investors-tu... <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/index-crazed-investors-turning-s-p-500-into-one-gigantic-company> Please register at https://www.jku.at/en/department-of-economics/research/research-events/onlin... <https://www.jku.at/en/department-of-economics/research/research-events/online-research-seminar/> for the zoom link. With best regards, René Böheim -- PD René Böheim, PhD Department of Economics JOHANNES KEPLER UNIVERSITÄT LINZ Altenberger Straße 69 4040 Linz, Österreich P +43-732-2468-7369 www.econ.jku.at/boeheim <http://www.econ.jku.at/boeheim> Research: http://ideas.repec.org/e/pbh15.html <http://ideas.repec.org/e/pbh15.html>
