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
Antitrust and Competition
Tim Wu Responds to Letter by Former Agency Chief Economists
Former special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy Tim Wu responds to the November 27 letter signed by former chief economists at the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department Antitrust Division calling for a separation of the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines.
Book Reviews
Can the Public Moderate Social Media?
ProMarket student editor Surya Gowda reviews the arguments made by Paul Gowder in his new book, The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms.
Income Inequality
Uninhibited Campaign Donations Risks Creating Oligarchy
In new research, Valentino Larcinese and Alberto Parmigiani find that the 1986 Reagan tax cuts led to greater campaign spending from wealthy individuals, who benefited the most from this policy. The authors argue that a very permissive system of political finance, combined with the erosion of tax progressivity, created the conditions for the mutual reinforcement of economic and political disparities. The result was an inequality spiral hardly compatible with democratic ideals.
ESG, Corporate Governance & Future of the Firm
Did the Meme Stock Revolution Actually Change Anything?
Many financial commentators thought that the surge of retail investors participating in the stock market, the most notable of whom boosted “meme stocks” like GameStop, would democratize corporate governance and improve prosocial firm behavior, including the promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. In new research, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee find evidence that the exact opposite took place.
Antitrust and Competition
The Kroger-Albertsons Merger Will Not Help Grocery Competition
Kroger and Albertsons say they need to merge to compete with Walmart. Claire Kelloway argues that what they really want is Walmart’s monopsony power, and permitting mergers on these grounds will only harm suppliers, workers, and consumers.
Research
Innovators Respond to Their Presidential Candidate Winning With More Innovation
Does an inventor’s political identity influence their productivity? In a new paper, Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, William Mullins, and Richard Townsend examine the impacts of the 2008 and 2016 United States presidential elections on Democrat and Republican inventors, with a particular focus on the quantity and quality of patents after the country elects a new president.
Antitrust and Competition
Letter to the Editor: Former FTC and DOJ Chief Economists Urge Separation of Economic and Legal Analysis in Merger Guidelines
Seventeen former chief economists of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division urge current Agency heads to separate the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines to strengthen the role of the latter in merger review.
