Sophia Gilbukh
Sophia (Sonia) Gilbukh is an Assistant Professor of Real Estate at the Zicklin School of Business. Her research focuses on markets with search frictions. Her recent paper “Heterogeneous Real Estate Agents and the Housing Cycle” uses both empirical and theoretical methods to study real estate agents as intermediaries in the housing market; in particular, it studies how the distribution of experience across real estate agents affects the probability of selling a home over the housing cycle. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Haverford College and a PhD from New York University, Stern School of Business.
Antitrust and Competition
How to Make the Market for Real Estate Agents More Competitive
Delinking buyer and seller commissions will make markets for real estate agent services more competitive, allowing buyers and sellers to negotiate commissions...
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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.
Antitrust and Competition
The State of The Debate on U.S. Antitrust and Competition
This year’s Stigler Center conference on antitrust and competition invited scholars to propose alternatives to the consumer welfare standard.
Antitrust and Competition
The Impact of Algorithms on Competition and Competition Law
Antonio Capobianco, the deputy head of the OECD Competition Division and one of the authors of the 2023 OECD report on algorithmic competition and collusion, explains the risks that algorithms and artificial intelligence pose to competition and how regulators can approach the changing competition paradigm.
Antitrust and Competition
Rivals’ Exit Should Be Incorporated into the Guidelines for Vertical Merger Evaluation
An exit-inducing vertical merger might reduce welfare even if it is a welfare-enhancing vertical merger absent exit. Therefore, the possibility for rivals’ exit should be incorporated into the guidelines for vertical merger evaluation, write Javier D. Donna and Pedro Pereira in new research.
Book Excerpts
The Business of Colonialism
In his new book, Empire Incorporated, Philip Stern argues that corporations drove the global expansion of the British Empire rather than provide...
