Some people are optimistic about stock returns, some are pessimistic. And, when presented with a similar menu of options, investors will make very different choices. In this paper, we try to understand why, using the actual decisions that investors make in their retirement plans.

Congratulations to my colleague @jmcolmer.bsky.social and co-authors for being recognized with an AEJ Best Paper award for their paper "Do Carbon Offsets Offset Carbon?" in AEJ: Applied! Paper is here: www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

New NBER WP on algorithmic "coercion." Unlike collusion, coercion can be achieved by a single firm's pricing algorithm. It can be worse for consumers than collusion. @nber.org

Several observations related to pricing, current technology, and consumer welfare, in this New York Times article.

Same product. Same store. Same time. But on Instacart, different customers may see different prices. My story on a fascinating new experiment from @groundwork.bsky.social & @consumerreports.org and how the idea of a single price is breaking down in the digital age: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/b...

New evidence from a field experiment finds that Amazon brands generate positive benefits to consumers, despite having similar substitutes and receiving priority in search rankings, from Chiara Farronato, Andrey Fradkin, and @amackay.bsky.social https://www.nber.org/papers/w34135

Using a field experiment, we studied how consumers valued Amazon brands and the extent of self-preferencing by Amazon. We found that Amazon brands bring benefits to consumers, even though they receive a modest prioritization in search rankings.

With unique data from a large global manufacturer, we were able to study how product markups vary along the supply chain and over time. One thing that surprised us: though manufacturer and retail markups bounce up and down, total (manufacturer + retail) markups are stable.

Pricing algorithms that provide a speed advantage and commitment can be worse for consumers than full collusion, from Zach Y. Brown and Alexander MacKay https://www.nber.org/papers/w34070

New NBER WP on algorithmic "coercion." Unlike collusion, coercion can be achieved by a single firm's pricing algorithm. It can be worse for consumers than collusion. @nber.org

Rivals' prices, and the ability to monitor them, play a special role in pricing algorithms. Zach Brown and I discuss the research and the implications in the latest CPI Antitrust Chronicle on Surveillance Pricing. Read the article here: tinyurl.com/2pj93aat

New paper on “Algorithmic Coercion”: We find that a single firm using a pricing algorithm can induce its rivals to set substantially higher prices, even when rivals maximize short-run profits and cannot collude.

I want to take a moment to share some UVA pride: this week, my colleague Emma Harrington received one of the four AEJ Best Paper Awards from the American Economic Association, for her AEJ: Applied paper with Natalia Emanuel on remote work. As we say down in Cville, Wahoo-wa!

Hey two "best papers" from UVA Econ! I don't mind bragging a bit! Congrats to Emma and @amackay.bsky.social! www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/ho...

100% what @florianederer.bsky.social said - big congratulations to all of the @aeajournals.bsky.social Best Paper award winners, especially Zach Brown & @amackay.bsky.social for their terrific paper on #algorithms and #competition! #economics #AI #econsky

Congratulations to all the winners, especially to Zach Brown & @amackay.bsky.social for their work on algorithmic pricing.

Forthcoming at the Journal of Political Economy: We find that consumer product markups increased more than 25 percent from 2006 to 2019. One contribution is an approach to estimate IO-style models at scale, yielding flexible consumer preferences and estimates of marginal costs.

People are paying a lot more attention to US government procurement data. The raw entries you get from usaspending.gov [or "FPDS"] are not very accurate. They are often off by an order of magnitude. Here's a procedure to get a better measure. alexandermackay.org/files/Append...

Happy to see this paper with @natehmiller.bsky.social in print! In the paper, we address identification of the price coefficient in models of supply and demand. We show how a covariance restriction between demand and cost shocks can resolve endogeneity. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

The Environmental Inequality Lab is hiring 2 new pre-docs to join our team! We do research in environmental economics but those with interests in labor/public/urban/spatial/development economics should def apply. Apply here: tinyurl.com/EIL-pre-doc @AereOrg

Hey #EconSky, I'm on the job market with an #EconJMP about open source software. OSS is a global public good, widely used and provided by the private sector, but the target of recent industrial policy. Paper: jeffgortmaker.com/files/Open_S... 1/

Nathan Miller has been appointed Chief Economist of the Antitrust Division. A great appointment. I note with particular pleasure that before becoming an academic, he was a Staff Economist in the Antitrust Division. www.nathanhmiller.org

A summary of two studies that look at the supply and demand factors behind price changes in consumer products over the period 2006 to 2023. Touches on markups and inflation. Thank you UVA for featuring our research. as.virginia.edu/investigatin...

🚨Just updated! 📈📉 Algorithmic pricing = automated pricing. This can soften competition, in large part because automation X commitment. But what if managers can override the algorithm, so commitment is diminished? Algos can still "collude"!

A useful suggestion when I asked how to avoid my feed being dominated by a few very frequent posters was the Quiet Posters feed. bsky.app/profile/why.... A satisfying one-feed solution doesn't seem to exist (at least yet). None are perfect, so I toggle between a few, including this one.

I am trying to be more active on here, and have not yet seen an IO or org econ starter pack, so here is an attempt at one: go.bsky.app/Rchu8QX Please shout out if I have forgotten someone, or when others join. #EconSky

🚨We are hiring two postdocs for AY 24-25 at the Pricing Lab at Harvard/HBS. The position is open to those with and without AP offers. You can work with industry data alongside Alberto Cavallo (macro side of the lab) and myself. Link for microeconomics: academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/12981

Are online prices higher because of pricing algorithms? Here we provide a high-level summary of the recent economic literature (see footnotes for papers): www.brookings.edu/articles/are...