José Azar

C.V.

Google Scholar Page

Publications:

• "Minimum Wage Employment Effects and Labor Market Concentration" (with Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, Ioana Marinescu, Bledi Taska, and Till von Wachter) shows that concentrated labor markets tend to experience positive employment effects from the minimum wage, while less concentrated markets experience negative employment effects. [Review of Economic Studies, accepted]

• "Common Ownership in Fintech Markets" (with Anna Tzanaki and Liudmila Alekseeva). [Konstantinos Stylianou , Marios Iacovides and Björn Lundqvist (eds.) Fintech Competition: Law, Policy, and Market Organisation (Bloomsbury Collections), 2023]

• "Did the MillerCoors Joint Venture Strengthen the Craft Beer Revolution?" (with Xabier Barriola). [International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2022]

• "Beyond the Target: M&A Decisions and Rival Ownership" (with Miguel Antón, Mireia Giné, and Luca X. Lin) shows empirically that, in value-destroying acquisitions, announcement losses from acquirer stakes are mitigated by gains from target and rival stakes. [Journal of Financial Economics, 2021]

• "Common Shareholders and Interlocking Directors: The Relation Between Two Corporate Networks" shows that pairs of companies that have common shareholders are also more likely to have common directors. [Journal of Competition Law and Economics, 2021] [Based on Ch. 5 of my Ph.D thesis]

• "The Demand for AI Skills in the Labor Market" (with Mila Alekseeva, Mireia Giné, Sampsa Samila, and Bledi Taska) documents the rise in the demand for AI skills in the labor market using the Burning Glass vacancies database, including effect on wages of AI and non-AI vacancies. [Labour Economics, 2021]

• "Ultimate Ownership and Bank Competition" (with Sahil Raina and Martin Schmalz) shows that spreads and fees for banking products are predicted by common ownership by diversified asset managers. [Finacial Management, 2021]

• "Common Ownership and Merger Control Enforcement" (with Anna Tzanaki) discusses the implications of common ownership for merger control. [Ioannis Kokkoris (ed.) Research Handbook in Competition Enforcement (Edward Elgar Publishing), 2022]

• "The Big Three and Corporate Carbon Emissions Around the World" (with Miguel Duro, Igor Kadach, and Gaizka Ormazábal) examines the role of the “Big Three” (i.e., BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors) on the reduction of corporate carbon emissions around the world. Using novel data on engagements of the Big Three with individual firms, we find evidence that the Big Three focus their engagement effort on large firms with high CO2 emissions in which these investors hold a significant stake. Consistent with this engagement influence being effective, we observe a strong and robust negative association between Big Three ownership and subsequent carbon emissions among MSCI index constituents. [Journal of Financial Economics, 2021]

• "General Equilibrium Oligopoly and Ownership Structure" (with Xavier Vives) develops a tractable model of oligopoly in general equilibrium, in which firms have market power in both product and labor markets. When there are multiple sectors, due to an intersectoral pecuniary externality, an increase in common ownership could stimulate the economy when the elasticity of labor supply is high relative to the elasticity of substitution in product markets. We characterize for which ownership structures the monopolistically competitive limit or an oligopolistic one are attained as the number of sectors in the economy increases. When firms have heterogeneous constant returns to scale technologies we find that an increase in common ownership leads to markets that are more concentrated.  [Econometrica, 2021]

• "Reply to Comments on 'General Equilibrium Oligopoly and Ownership Sctructure'" (with Xavier Vives) responds to comments by Jan Eeckhout and Thomas Philippon on our general equilibrium oligopoly paper. [Econometrica, 2021]

• "Research on the Competitive Consequences of Common Ownership: A Methodological Critique" (with Martin Schmalz and Isabel Tecu) examines the evidence presented in several critiques of Azar, Schmalz, and Tecu’s (AST) “airlines” paper, and points out that it often does not back the conclusion these studies draw. [Antitrust Bulletin, 2021]

• "Concentration in U.S. Labor Markets: Evidence from Online Vacancy Data" (with Ioana Marinescu, Marshall Steinbaum, and Bledi Taska) measures labor market concentration in U.S. geographical-occupational markets using a dataset of all online vacancies in the U.S. from Burning Glass Technologies. [Labour Economics, 2020]

• "Labor Market Concentration" (with Ioana Marinescu and Marshall Steinbaum) measures labor market concentration in U.S. geographical-occupational markets. The average market is highly concentrated, and concentration has a large negative effect on wages. [Journal of Human Resources, 2020]

• "The Common Ownership Trilemma" argues that it is impossible to achieve the following objectives simultaneously: (i) portfolio diversification, (ii) shareholder representation, and (iii) competition. The trilemma highlights a fundamental systemic problem in stock market economies: their inherent tendency towards common ownership, and therefore away from market competition. [Chicago Law Review, 2020]

• "Antitrust and Labor Market Power" (with Ioana Marinescu and Marshall Steinbaum) develops a policy agenda for antitrust enforcement in labor markets. [Economics for Inclusive Prosperity Policy Brief, 2019]

• "Does Common Ownership Increase Incentives for Mergers and Acquisitions?" (with Miguel Antón, Mireia Giné, and Luca X. Lin) discusses an important reason why mergers that might seem irrational from the perspective of acquiring firm shareholders are approved: shareholders gain from their stakes in the target and in non-merging rival firms. [Competition Policy International, 2019]

• "Common Ownership and the Secular Stagnation Hypothesis" (with Xavier Vives) develops and calibrates a macroeconomic model based on general equilibrium oligopoly, in which firms have market power in both product and factor markets. An increase in market concentration, either from mergers or common ownership can lead to secular stagnation. We find that the increase in common ownership since the 1980s can potentially explain quantitatively the decline in the labor and capital shares. [American Economic Association Papers & Proceedings, 2019]

• "Measuring Labor Market Power Two Ways" (with Ioana Marinescu and Marshall Steinbaum) measures a proxy for firm-level elasticity of labor supply across geographic and occupational labor markets in the US, and finds that it is negatively associated with labor market concentration. [American Economic Association Papers & Proceedings, 2019]

• "Anti-Competitive Effects of Common Ownership" (with Martin Schmalz and Isabel Tecu) shows that common ownership of natural competitors by diversified asset managers predicts higher product prices.

        [Online Appendix] [Slides] [The Journal of Finance, 2018, doi.org/10.1111/jofi.12698] [Replication Package]

• "Why Common Ownership Causes Antitrust Risks" (with Martin Schmalz and Isabel Tecu) illustrates the extent of present-day common ownership and discusses the economic logic of why common ownership leads to reduced incentives to compete and may cause anticompetitive outcomes. [Competition Policy International, 2017]

• "Common Owneship of Competitors Raises Antitrust Concerns" (with Martin Schmalz) summarises the empirical research on common ownership and competition to date, reactions by legal scholars, and policy responses, and offers some new evidence of common ownership links in Europe. [Journal of European Competition Law and Practice, 2017, doi.org/10.1093/jeclap/lpx032]

• "Can Changes in the Cost of Carry Explain the Dynamics of Corporate Cash Holdings?" (with Jean-François Kagy and Martin Schmalz) shows that changes in the costs of holding cash can explain secular trends in U.S. corporate cash holdings, as well as cross-country variation in the level of cash. [Review of Financial Studies, 2016, doi:10.1093/rfs/hhw021]

Working Papers:

• "Monopsony and Automation" (with Marina Chugunova, Klaus Keller, and Samspa Samila)

• "Estimating Oligopoly with Shareholder Voting Models" (with Ricardo Ribeiro) 

• "Common Ownership in Labor Markets" (with Yue Qiu and Aaron Sojourner).

• "Revisiting the Anticompetitive Effects of Common Ownership" (with Xavier Vives) finds, using data from the airlines industry, that, consistent with the predictions of the general equilibrium oligopoly model of Azar and Vives (2021), intra-industry common ownership increases prices, but inter-industry common ownership reduces prices. Overall, the effect of the "Big Three" on airline prices is negative.

• "Who's in Favor of Competition?" (with Simcha Barkai) We use microdata from the Survey of Consumer Finances to empirically construct the gains and losses to households from increasing competition. Nearly all young households favor increasing competition. The fraction of households in favor of competition declines with age. High labor income households accumulate corporate securities at a much higher rate than low labor income households and as a result they oppose competition from a younger age. A large majority of households favor increasing competition. Despite being a minority, households that oppose increasing competition own the vast majority of resources in the economy.

• "Estimating Labor Market Power" (with Steven Berry and Ioana Marinescu) uses data on job applications from the large job board CareerBuilder.com to estimate the wage impact on workers' choice among differentiated jobs in the largest occupations.

• "Oligopoly, Macroeconomic Performance, and Competition Policy" (with Xavier Vives) develops a macroeconomic framework based on general equilibrium oligopoly, in which firms have market power in both product and labor markets. Firms maximize a weighted average of shareholder utilities, which makes the equilibrium independent of price normalization. In large economies, neither the monopolistically competitive limit of Dixit-Stiglitz nor the oligopolistic one of Neary are attained unless there is incomplete portfolio diversification with no intra-industry common ownership.

• "Portfolio Diversification, Market Power and the Theory of the Firm" develops a theory of firm behavior in the context of oligopoly and portfolio diversification by shareholders, and introduces indices that capture internalization effects from consumer and worker control. [Slides] [Earlier version with Banzhaf index microfoundation]

• "A New Look at Oligopoly: Implicit Collusion Through Portfolio Diversification" Documents a large increase in common ownership among publicly trade U.S. firms, and provides evidence that common ownership within industry is associated with higher industry margins. Argues that it is impossible to achieve at the same time complete portfolio diversification, shareholder representation, and competition. [Longer version (PhD thesis)]