The optimal duration of a supply contract balances the costs of re-selecting a supplier against the costs of being matched to an inefficient supplier when the contract lasts too long. I develop a structural model of contract duration that captures this tradeoff and provide an empirical strategy...

When deciding whether to introduce market competition into a regulated industry, a regulator faces an important tradeoff. Market-based prices can provide incentives to allocate resources more efficiently and reduce costs, but the presence of market power may lead to increased markups. We use a...

We study empirical patterns in investment behavior using a comprehensive data set of defined contribution plans. Using plan-level portfolio allocation data for the near universe of 401(k) plans over the period 2009-2019, we document substantial differences in investment behavior across plans....

Abstract We use a revealed-preference approach to estimate investor expectations of stock market returns. Using data on demand for index funds that follow the S&P 500, we develop and estimate a model of investor choice to flexibly recover the time-varying distribution of expected returns. Our...

We study the pricing decision of firms in the presence of consumer inertia. Inertia can arise from habit formation, brand loyalty, switching costs, or search, and it has important implications for the interpretation of equilibrium outcomes and counterfactual analysis. In particular, consumer...

We consider the identification of empirical models of supply and demand. As is well known, a supply-side instrument can resolve price endogeneity in demand estimation. We show that, under common assumptions, two other approaches also yield consistent estimates of the joint model: (i) a...

Increasingly, retailers have access to better pricing technology, especially in online markets. Using hourly data from five major online retailers, we show that retailers set prices at regular intervals that differ across firms. In addition, faster firms appear to use automated pricing rules...