Research
Publications
Journal of Political Economy, 133(7): 2031–2088, 2025
Using a natural experiment from a retail gasoline antitrust case, we study how asymmetric information sharing affects oligopoly pricing. Empirically, price competition softens when, following case settlement, information sharing shifts from symmetric to asymmetric, with one firm losing access to high-frequency granular rival price data. We provide theory and empirics illustrating how strategic ignorance creates price commitment, leading to higher price-cost margins. Using a structural model, we find substantial profit-enhancing effects of asymmetric information sharing. These results provide a cautionary tale for antitrust agencies regarding the potential unintended consequences of limiting price information sharing among firms.
Review of Economics and Statistics, 2025 (advance access)
Platform-based information sharing among competing firms presents challenges for antitrust authorities, yet effective remedies remain unclear. Drawing inspiration from the Informed Sources retail gasoline antitrust case, we develop a theoretical model that offers policy guidance for disrupting anticompetitive coordination facilitated through price-sharing platforms. Removing only one firm from a platform may be ineffective for disrupting such coordination. However, competitive benefits can emerge if (i) at least two firms lack platform access, and (ii) the costs of price leadership are sufficiently high. More broadly, coordinating price increases becomes more difficult when multiple firms cannot quickly observe or respond to rivals' prices.
The RAND Journal of Economics, 55: 292–323, 2024
This article estimates a model of optimal search where consumers learn the distribution of gasoline prices during their driving trips. Our model incorporates traffic information and leverages this ordered search environment to recover parameters of the search and learning process using only station-level price and market share data. We find that learning is a crucial component of search in this market. Consumers' prior beliefs regularly deviate from the true price distribution but are updated quickly following each new price observation. Counterfactuals reveal how these learning dynamics generate asymmetric search patterns commonly associated with asymmetric cost pass-through.
Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 31(4): 923–941, 2022
Governments often make public announcements that call into question firms' misuse of market power. Yet little is known about how firms respond to them. We study gasoline retailers' price responses to antitrust announcements shaming them for price gouging during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify price effects using a high-frequency event-study leveraging unique real-time station-level price data and well-identified, discrete antitrust announcements. We find evidence of announcement effects that depend on firms' preannouncement margins and hence exposure to being publicly shamed. Public statements by antitrust questioning firms' misuse of market power can indeed contain signals that affect equilibrium outcomes.
Working Papers
Negotiating Coordination: A Study in Retail Gasoline
Submitted, May 2026
We study how firms negotiate collusive pricing structures when communicating through prices rather than natural language. Using hourly station-level retail gasoline price data, we document a five-year transition from a focal-pricing to a price-signaling structure, driven by inter-firm bargaining under strategic uncertainty. Along the transition, recurring price wars serve a dual role: beyond enforcement, they yield informative signals that facilitate equilibrium selection. The transition ultimately yields a 30% increase in margins and triggers a federal antitrust case. We discuss implications for the theory of collusion and antitrust policies that shape the competitive effects of digital information sharing and pricing algorithms.
How Gasoline Price Elasticity Varies with Income