The OMDS/VGSE Vienna Joint Economics seminar is held weekly on Thursdays during the term.
VJE-Seminars scheduled in April:
- Speaker: Klodiana Istrefi (Banque de France)
- Title: The Systematic Origins of Monetary Policy Shocks (by Lukas Hack, Klodiana Istrefi and Matthias Meier)
- Time: Thursday, April 10, 1:15 – 2:45 pm
- Location: Lecture Hall 12 (2-floor), OMP-1
- Abstract: Conventional strategies to identify monetary policy shocks rest on the implicit assumption that systematic monetary policy is constant over time. We formally show that these strategies do not isolate monetary policy shocks in an environment with time-varying systematic monetary policy. Instead, they are contaminated by systematic monetary policy and macroeconomic variables, leading to contamination bias in estimated impulse responses. Empirically, we show that Romer and Romer (2004) monetary policy shocks are indeed predictable by fluctuations in systematic monetary policy. Instead, we propose a new monetary policy shock that is orthogonal to systematic monetary policy. Our shock suggests U.S. monetary policy has shorter lags and stronger effects on inflation and output.
- Speaker: Joe Harrington (University of Pennsylvania)
- Title: Hub-and-Spoke Collusion with a Third-Party Pricing Algorithm
- Time: Thursday, April 3, 1:15 – 2:45 pm
- Location: Lecture Hall 12 (2-floor), OMP-1
- Abstract: This paper explores a new form of hub-and-spoke collusion: A data analytics company (hub) coordinates the prices of competitors (spokes) through the pricing algorithm that it supplies to them. The novel feature is that the hub delivers an efficiency as its pricing algorithm is more effective in having price respond to demand variation. Stable collusion is shown to be feasible even when there are many small firms. Furthermore, the magnitude of the supracompetitive markup is increasing in the efficiency delivered by the third party. We then find that a procompetitive efficiency enhances the risk of anticompetive harm.
