University of Toronto Distinguished Professor of Economics and Finance, Economic Analysis and Policy Area, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, FREcon (Fellow of the Royal Economic Society); Distinguished Fellow at the School of Business Administration at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
I work in industrial organization, corporate finance, and organizational economics, with a focus on how intermediaries shape economic outcomes. Much of my recent work examines digital platforms, ranking and steering algorithms, labor market frictions, and the governance of attention and information. I draw inspiration broadly and have cited both Shakespeare and the Beastie Boys in published work.
Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, 105 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5S 3E6, CANADA; email: heski.bar-isaac@rotman.utoronto.ca; Tel: ++1 416 978 3626; Fax: ++1 416 978 5433; BlueSky @profeski.bsky.social
Recent Papers
Training for Adverse Selection with Raphaël Lévy
Impressing the Algorithm: Sales-Based Ranking, Learning, and Off-Platform Pricing, with Sandro Shelegia
Selling Certification, Content Moderation, and Attention with Rahul Deb and Matt Michell
Monetizing Steering (with Sandro Shelegia) Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, accepted.
When to front-load persuasion, Economics Letters, 266, July 2026, 11305
Acquihiring for Monopsony Power with Justin Johnson and Volker Nocke, Management Science, 2025, 71(4), 3485–3496. This paper was awarded the Robert F. Lanzilotti Prize for the best paper in antitrust economics at the 2024 International Industrial Organization Conference.
Targeted Product Design (with Guillermo Caruana and Vicente Cuñat) American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2023, 15(2), 157-86.
Search, Showrooming and Retailer Variety (with Sandro Shelegia) Marketing Science, 2023, Vol 42(2), 251-270. Here is a cartoon video introduction.
Training, Recruitment, and Outplacement as Endogenous Asymmetric Information (with Clare Leaver), Economica, 89, 2022, 849–861. Here is a cartoon video introduction.
Motivating Employees through Career Paths (with Raphaël Lévy) Journal of Labor Economics, Vol 40 (1), 2022, 95-131.
No time for my work? Could cheap marketing tricks help? Read haiku abstracts
Editorial work: RAND Journal of Economics (Editor); previously The Economic Journal. (Here are some haiku abstracts of EJ papers); American Economic Review; Journal of Industrial Economics; Canadian Journal of Economics; International Journal of Industrial Organization
Other affiliations: CEPR Fellow; CRESSE Fellow; Industrial Organization Society board member