José Azar
José Azar is an Assistant Professor at the University of Navarra and Research Associate at IESE Business School, specializing in antitrust and corporate governance. His work studies the implications for competition of the rise of common ownership of companies by large and diversified asset managers. More recently, he has done research on labor market concentration and power. He is a Research Affiliate at the CEPR, a member of Economics for Inclusive Prosperity (EfIP), and has published at top-tier journals (Econometrica, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, etc.). He worked at Charles River Associates in the Antitrust and Competition Practice, received his PhD from Princeton University, and his BA from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina.
Antitrust and Competition
Gauging Common Ownership in Fintech Markets
A new empirical paper estimates the scope and impact of common ownership in fintech markets. The authors find limited common ownership among...
Antitrust and Competition
Antitrust Enforcement, Inflation and Corporate Greed: What do we know?
At a recent Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) event, panelists, including the Stigler Center's own Luigi Zingales, reflected on the roles...
News
Are Large Institutional Investors Actually Effective in Getting Companies to Reduce Their CO2 Emissions?
Large institutional investors have been accused of not doing
enough to reduce CO2 emissions. However, a new study finds that firms like
BlackRock, Vanguard,...
Latest news
Commentary
The Banking Risks of Central Bank Digital Currencies
The implementation of central bank digital currencies as the primary medium of exchange would exacerbate the flaws of our current fiat system which encourage banks to overextend credit and create liabilities that they cannot redeem. This will worsen the already recurring cycles of financial crises, writes Vibhu Vikramaditya.
Antitrust and Competition
The Whig History of the Merger Guidelines
A pervasive "Whig" view of United States antitrust history among scholars and practitioners celebrates the Merger Guidelines' implementation of increasingly sophisticated economic methods since their...
Antitrust and Competition
Algorithmic Collusion in the Housing Market
While the development of artificial intelligence has led to efficient business strategies, such as dynamic pricing, this new technology is vulnerable to collusion and consumer harm when companies share the same software through a central platform. Gabriele Bortolotti highlights the importance of antitrust enforcement in this domain for the second article in our series, using as a case study the RealPage class action lawsuit in the Seattle housing market.
Antitrust and Competition
The Future Markets Model Explains Meta/Within: A Reply to Herb Hovenkamp
In response to both Herb Hovenkamp’s February 27 article in ProMarket and, perhaps more importantly, also to Hovenkamp’s highly regarded treatise, Lawrence B. Landman, first, shows that the Future Markets Model explains the court’s decision in Meta/Within. Since Meta was not even trying to make a future product, the court correctly found that Meta would not enter the Future Market. Second, the Future Markets Model is the analytical tool which Hovenkamp says the enforcers lack when they try to protect competition to innovate.
Book Excerpts
The Chicago Boys and the Chilean Neoliberal Project
In a new book, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism, Sebastian Edwards details the history of neoliberalism in Chile over the past seventy years. The Chicago Boys—a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago through the U.S. State Department’s “Chile Project”—played a central role in neoliberalism’s ascent during General Augusto Pinochet’s rule. What follows is an excerpt from the book on University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman’s 1975 visit to Chile to meet with Pinochet and business leaders.
Antitrust and Competition
Creating a Modern Antitrust Welfare Standard that Integrates Post-Chicago and Neo-Brandeisian Goals
Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel A. Lozada argue that the Consumer Welfare Standard is inconsistent with modern welfare economics and that a modern approach to antitrust could integrate traditional Congressional goals as advocated by the Neo-Brandesians. Such an approach could be the basis for an alliance between the post-Chicago economists and the Neo-Brandesians.
Democracy
Getting Partisans To Listen to One Another Can Reduce Political Polarization
In new research, Guglielmo Briscese and Michèle Belot find that reminding Americans of shared values can open lines of communication and help reduce political polarization.
