Robert F. Lanzillotti Prize
The Robert F. Lanzillotti Prize is for the best paper in antitrust economics accepted for presentation at the International Industrial Organization Conference.
Dr. Robert F. Lanzillotti was the Founding Director of the Robert F. Lanzillotti Public Policy Research Center at the University of Florida. Bob believed strongly that public policy should be informed by rigorous, unbiased economic research. To encourage and recognize outstanding research in antitrust economics, Bob established the Lanzillotti Prize.
Sadly, Bob Lanzillotti passed away on July 8, 2022. His legacy lives on as we continue to award the Robert F. Lanzillotti prize for the best paper in antitrust economics at the IIOC.
2024 Recipient
Heski Bar-Isaac (University of Toronto), Justin Johnson (Cornell University), and Volker Nocke (University of Mannheim), for "Acquihiring for Monopsony Power"
Heski Bar-Isaac, Justin Johnson, and Volker Nocke study acquisitions in which startups are acquired for the sole purpose of hiring specialized talent. The authors suppose that when a large firm buys a small firm it has no interest in assets other than the firm's specialized workers. A puzzle in these cases is why the acquiring firm should pay anything to the target firm's shareholders, rather than simply hiring away the specialized workers. They show theoretically that by using acquihiring, the acquiring firm plus the shareholders in the small firm are able to expropriate employees' surplus. This suggests that a common defense of acquihiring -- that it is a hiring tool not meant to affect competition in the product market -- can itself be a means of reducing competition in the labor market. As a consequence, acquihiring may harm employees and be socially inefficient.
Past Recipients
2023
Thomas Eisenberg (University of Delaware), Manuel Estay (Universidad de Concepción), and Debi Prasad Mohapatra (University of Massachusetts), for “Welfare Effects of Trade Associations: The Case of the Chilean Salmon Export Industry”
2022
Hendrik Döpper (DICE), Alexander MacKay (Harvard), Nathan H. Miller (Georgetown) and Joel Stiebale (DICE), for “Rising Markups and the Role of Consumer Preferences”
2021
Aaron Barkley, for “The Human Cost of Collusion: Health Effects of a Mexican Insulin Cartel”
2020
Colleen Cunningham (London Business School), Florian Ederer (Yale University) and Song Ma (Yale University), for “Killer Acquisitions”
2019
Justin Johnson (Cornell University) and Andrew Rhodes (Toulouse School of Economics), for “Multiproduct Mergers and Quality Competition”
2018
Sophia Ying Li (Cornerstone Research), Joe Mazur (Purdue University), Yongjoon Park (University of Maryland), James Roberts (Duke University), Andrew Sweeting (University of Maryland), and Jun Zhang (University of Maryland), for “Endogenous and Selective Service Choices After Airline Mergers”
2017
John Asker (UCLA), Chaim Fershtman (Tel Aviv University), Jihye Jeon (New York University), and Ariel Pakes (Harvard University), for “The Competitive Effects of Information Sharing”
2016
No award
2015
Nathan Miller (Georgetown University) and Matthew Weinberg (Drexel University), for “Mergers Facilitate Tacit Collusion: An Empirical Investigation of the Miller/Coors Joint Venture”
2014
Volker Nocke, (University of Mannheim), Ben Mermelstein (Northwestern University), Mark Satterthwaite (Northwestern University), and Michael Whinston (MIT and NBER), for “Internal Vs External Growth in Industries with Scale Economies: A Computational Model of Optimal Merger Policy”
2013
Philip G. Gayle (Kansas State University) and Huubinh B. Le (Kansas State University), for “Measuring Merger Cost Effects: Evidence from a Dynamic Structural Econometric Model”
2012
Richard Friberg (Stockholm School of Economics) and Andre Romahn (Stockholm School of Economics), for “Ex-Post Merger Review and Divestitures”
2011
Martijn Han (Amsterdam Center for Law and Economics) and Charles Angelucci (Toulouse School of Economics and CREST-LEI), for “Monitoring Managers Through Corporate Compliance Programs”
2010
Michelle Goeree (University of Southern California and University of Zurich) and Eric Helland (Claremont McKenna College and RAND) for “Do Research Joint Ventures Serve a Collusive Function?”
2009
Abraham Wickelgren (Northwestern University School of Law) and Marco Ottaviani (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University) for “Approval Regulation and Learning, with Application to Timing of Merger Control”
2008
The first annual Robert F. Lanzillotti Prize was awarded to Dennis W. Carlton (University of Chicago), Joshua S. Gans (University of Melbourne), and Michael Waldman (Cornell University), for “Why Tie a Product Consumers Do Not Use?”