About
I am pursuing my Ph.D. in Financial Economics at Yale University.
I received my J.D. from Yale Law School in 2021 and graduated summa
cum laude with a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University in 2017.
My research focuses on antitrust, contracts and business organizations.
Research
Can Robinson-Patman Enforcement Be Pro-Consumer?
Job Talk Paper
Antitrust agencies are once again interested in the Robinson-Patman Act,
a dormant Depression Era statute that prohibits discriminatory wholesale
pricing. This paper is the first to empirically study retailer market exit
caused by discriminatory pricing—a key concern for the Act’s drafters.
In doing so, it addresses and refutes the central objection to the Robinson-Patman
Act—that the Act protects small retailers at the expense of consumers.
The paper employs an economic model to identify three forces that determine
consumer welfare effects of discriminatory pricing: heterogeneity in consumer
preferences for retailer attributes, wholesaler-retailer bargaining, and
retailer exit. The model shows that while chain stores often secure wholesale
discounts under discriminatory pricing, this advantage can drive independent
stores out of the market, ultimately reducing competition and harming consumers.
An empirical analysis of the U.S. liquor sector—currently under FTC
investigation—supports these conclusions, showing that discriminatory pricing
results in an annual consumer welfare loss of $4.91 per individual, totaling
$529 million in a year across the industry. These findings challenge the prevailing
arguments in the ongoing legal debate, which often lean toward categorically
permitting or prohibiting discriminatory pricing. Instead, this paper recommends
a nuanced, case-by-case evaluation of price discrimination, emphasizing the
importance of considering the interaction between the three forces.
Misaligned Measures of Control: Private Equity’s Antitrust
Loophole
with Thomas G. Wollmann and John M. Barrios
Virginia Law & Business Review (2023)
Agencies and legislators have raised concerns that acquisitions
backed by private equity (PE) threaten competition, but few, if
any, have offered explanations as to why they pose a unique
threat. In this article, we argue that PE-backed acquisitions may
avoid antitrust enforcement because they escape detection. Under
the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, parties
intending to merge must notify federal authorities and wait for
clearance. However, various exemptions exist based on the size of
the transaction, parties involved, and proportion of control
conferred by the merger. Recent work demonstrates that to police
mergers effectively, agencies must be informed about transactions
in their incipiency, meaning that in many economically important
industries, the contours of the premerger notification program
under the Act are, in practice, the same as the contours of the
substantive legal standard. We show that when the Act’s exemptions
are applied to PE’s standard investment structure, which use an
array of intermediate special purpose vehicles to minimize taxes,
share risks, and distribute fees, many PE-backed acquisitions that
would otherwise be reportable are exempt. We support our argument
with merger and filing data.
Can Machines Commit Crimes Under US Antitrust Laws?
with Thomas G. Wollmann
The University of Chicago Business Law Review (2024)
Generative artificial intelligence is being rapidly deployed for
corporate tasks including pricing. Suppose one of these machines
communicates with the pricing manager of a competing firm,
proposes to collude, receives assent, and raises price. Is this a
crime under US antitrust laws, and, if so, who is liable? Based on
the observed behavior of the most widely adopted large language
model, we argue that this conduct is imminent, would satisfy the
requirements for agreement and intent under Section 1 of the
Sherman Act, and confer criminal liability to both firms as well
as the pricing manager of the competing firm.
Notification and Enforcement of PE-Backed Consolidation
with Thomas G. Wollmann
Antitrust Chronicle (2024)
Private equity faces increasing scrutiny from antitrust authorities.
Recently, the Federal Trade Commission sued a large financial sponsor
and its portfolio company over a long series of acquisitions that allegedly
consolidated Texas anesthesia markets and sharply raised prices. As the
transactions span ten years, a natural question arises as to how they
escaped enforcement for so long. Our answer is that the agency did not
challenge the acquisitions in their incipiency because they were exempt
from premerger notification. If we accept the government’s claims,
then this case reflects potential deficiencies in the Hart-Scott-Rodino
Act and Rules, which establish and determine US reporting requirements.
One problem is that exemptions depend on transaction size: acquisitions
of small targets can have large economic consequences, resulting in stealth
consolidation. The other problem is specific to private equity. When the
investment structures commonly employed by financial sponsors are interpreted
under the law, many transactions that would otherwise be reportable are instead
exempt.
When Do Non-Price Vertical Restraints Become Unreasonable?
(submitted for publication--under review)
Intrabrand non-price vertical restraints emerge from agreements between upstream and downstream
firms and impose conditions on the downstream firm’s resale of products. They are prevalent in
the economy, especially in consumer-facing industries. Following the Supreme Court’s 1977 decision
in Sylvania, these restrictions have been subject to the rule of reason. In Sylvania,
the Court noted that these restraints incentivize downstream firms to invest in product launches
and brand promotion. Yet, if one of the main objectives of these restraints is to facilitate
brand building and product introduction, a question arises as to whether they should be revisited
at some point in the product’s lifecycle. This paper argues that intrabrand non-price vertical
restraints should be limited in duration. The initial phase of exclusivity incentivizes downstream
firms to invest in new products and brands. But once these products gain recognition and firms
recoup their investment, exclusivity starts maintaining prices above competitive levels without
offering any countervailing competitive benefits. At this point, these restraints should be found
unreasonable. To substantiate this framework, this paper presents both a novel economic model and
a new empirical study of the exclusive territory provisions in the ready-to-drink beverage industry.
It shows that when third-party distributors violate exclusive territories, prices of both affected
and rival products decrease. Additionally, product sales in the affected territories either experience
an increase or remain stable, suggesting a lack of significant decline in product quality. However,
the breach of the exclusive territories leads to a reduction in product variety, underscoring the
significance of these restraints for downstream investment in new products.
Painful Bargaining: Evidence from Anesthesia Rollups
(NBER Working Paper) with Paulo Ramos, Amanda Starc, and Thomas G. Wollmann
A rollup is a series of acquisitions through which a financial sponsor consolidates ownership.
Increasingly, this strategy is shaping economically important markets, but historically, it has
escaped antitrust enforcement. We study this phenomenon in the anesthesia industry, site of the
first rollup-based antitrust case in US history. First, we identify 18 other rollups that are
observationally similar to the litigated ones. Next, we show that rollups consolidate ownership
and that prices rise sharply as competing practices are acquired. Last, we estimate a structural
bargaining model and simulate counterfactual equilibria under remedies that courts are likely to consider.
How Do Commercial Banks Leverage Market Power?
(working paper) with Jakub Kastl
Cluster products are complementary goods that have reduced
transaction costs when purchased from a single company. These
products are economically important and abundant in markets. A
notable example is the commercial banking products. In this
particular market, consumers arguably select banks rather than
specific banking products, allowing banks to leverage their power
in one product market, such as loans, to set rates in another
product market, such as deposits. Although the concept of cluster
products has roots in seminal Supreme Court decisions from the
1960s, modern regulatory analysis of proposed bank mergers often
overlooks this phenomenon. In this paper, we present a structural
demand and supply model for loans and deposits that accounts for
the complementarity between these commercial banking products. In
our model, banks compete in these two product markets by taking
into consideration the interplay between the demands for both
products. We use our model to predict the impact of actual mergers
on deposit and loan rates charged by and market shares of each
market participant. Subsequently, we compare these predictions to
the rates and shares that were realized after the studied mergers.
Conferences
America Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting (May 2023)
Misaligned Measures of Control: Private Equity’s Antitrust Loophole
Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (Oct. 2023)
Misaligned Measures of Control: Private Equity’s Antitrust Loophole
How Do Commercial Banks Leverage Market Power?
Cambridge-USC Virtual Antitrust Workshop (Dec. 2023)
When Do Non-Price Vertical Restraints Become Unreasonable?
Media Coverage
A Q&A with Private Equity Researcher Aslihan Asil (Apr. 2023)
by Ben Remaly in Global Competition Review