In its latest issue, the leading German antitrust law journal “Wettbewerb und Wirtschaft” is interviewing UCLA-professor Volker Nocke. The interview centers around the usefulness of the “as-efficient competitor test” for predation and foreclosure, which the European Court of Justice appears to endorse in its judgment in the Intel case; the role of economics in antitrust […]
Robert Barro talked about his views of the effect of the 2017 “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”. He argued that the lower corporate tax rates will lower the cost of capital, and raise the long-run GDP by around 8%. He also argued that the individual tax cuts will raise the incentive for individuals to work […]
In an essay in Politico, Professor Lleras-Muney discusses the lessons from the Mothers’ Pension Program, an early 20th century welfare program that gave cash to single mothers. Using census records, she finds that children in the program lived one to two years longer, and obtained higher education and incomes. The article can be found here.
Merger approval decisions of national antitrust authorities have important effects on other jurisdictions. For example, the merger of two U.S. pharmaceutical companies may lead to higher drugs prices in Europe, or affect the worldwide level of innovation. As the efficiency gains induced by a merger might be sufficient to outweigh its anti-competitive effect in one […]
The rise of information technology has made it relatively simple to change prices over the life of a product. Such “dynamic pricing” is important for many industries: In retailing, sellers can carefully manage end-of season sales; in the airline industry, firms can adjust the price of a particular flight to the number of seats sold, […]
As part of the MAE Distinguished Speaker series, Pat Bajari, the Chief Economist of Amazon, gave a talk on using big data in practice. His talk focused on the methodology of how to continuous refine algorithms to make steady improvements, by developing new models, training them on data and then testing them against competitors. […]
Professor David K. Levine graduated from UCLA in 1977, earning a dual degree of Bachelors in Mathematics and a Masters in Economics. He was enrolled as a UCLA student during high school, but he later studied at Harvard University for a year before coming back to UCLA in his second year and finishing his degrees. […]
Social and economic networks permeate our lives. They play an important role in determining how diseases spread, which products we buy, how much education we attain, and even whether to smoke. Since social and economic networks are central to our economic well-being, economists have recently become increasingly interested in exploring how social and economic networks […]
Professor Volker Nocke is the scientific program chair of the 44thAnnual Conference of the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics (EARIE), which takes place from August 31 till September 2, 2017 in Maastricht, The Netherlands. With more than 400 participants from Europe, North America, and the rest of the world, it is the largest […]
