Joshua Gans
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joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans
@joshgans.bsky.social
4.1K followers 210 following 720 posts

Professor at University of Toronto

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Joshua Gans holds the Jeffrey Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Until 2011, he was an economics professor at Melbourne Business School in Australia. His research focuses on competition policy and intellectual property protection. He is the author of several textbooks and policy books, as well as numerous articles in economics journals. He operates two blogs: one on economic policy, and another on economics and parenting. .. more

Business 41%
Economics 37%
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Reposted by Joshua Gans

Reposted by Joshua Gans

Reposted by Joshua Gans

joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 15h
Anyhow, here is the paper. It doesn't involve any fancy techniques. Indeed, it could have easily been written in the 1950s. www.nber.org/papers/w34669
Price Discrimination with Costless Resale
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
www.nber.org

joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 15h
Is this just a theoretical curiosity? It certainly is that. But I think that a range of different prices based on income-related factors does arise in things like car sales and pharmaceuticals (especially internationally).

joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 15h
The result generalises and has interesting welfare properties. While high income effects allow for price discrimination, this is not the only preference-related assumptions that can lead to price discrimination.

joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 15h
What is key is that the monopolist can practice market power at an individual customer level by restricting purchases to each individual (whereas the usual market power assumption is that it is a restriction across the market).

joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 15h
Subsidising the poor makes them "wealthier," which increases their attachment to the good, which raises their reservation price for resale. The monopolist exploits this by discounting to low-income buyers until their reservation price equals what high-income buyers must pay.

joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 15h
... the discount leaves them with higher disposable income, and since the good is normal, they now value it more—raising the minimum price they'd accept to part with it.

joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 15h
Assume there are high and low income types, and the monopoly is selling a normal good. Then, as the monopoly discounts to low-income types, if they sell to high-types, they are foregoing more because ...

joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 15h
Why? Rather than assuming quasi-linear preferences as we have done in IO for decades, I assume demand comes from utility over all goods maximised subject to a budget constraint. You know, Samuelson type micro. This allows, importantly, for things like income effects.

joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 15h
New paper out today. Price discrimination requires market power, market segmentation and no resale. This paper drops the last one and assumes costless resale. No transaction costs and everyone knows everyone's type. It shows price discrimination can still arise. www.nber.org/papers/w34669 🧵👇
Price Discrimination with Costless Resale
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
www.nber.org

Reposted by Joshua Gans, Caroline Krafft, Edgar Morgenroth , and 3 more

scientificdiscovery.dev
Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 1d
Economists!

I am looking for someone to coauthor an article on the massive decline in costs of genome sequencing.

The science is all fine, but I'm interested in the economics of it all: the innovation, funding, prizes, patents, etc.

Does anyone come to mind? Thanks!

Reposted by Joshua Gans

joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 3d
The World Wall: a new term to describe the trading wall that is being constructed around the US by the US and others, while removing trading obstructions everywhere else. You won’t see the World Wall from space or physically, but in the economic data.

Reposted by Joshua Gans

Reposted by Joshua Gans

Reposted by Joshua Gans

nber.org
NBER @nber.org · 3d
Studying automation when tasks are quality complements rather than separable, from @joshgans.bsky.social and Avi Goldfarb www.nber.org/papers/w34639

joshgans.bsky.social
Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 3d
On that little arrow near the fuel gauge... A open.substack.com/pub/joshuaga...
AI and the Moylan Arrow
We need more AI arrows
open.substack.com