Contact Information
Ellen R. McGrattan
4-161 Hanson Hall
612-625-6714
erm@umn.edu
Office Hours
By appointment
Mailing Address
Department of Economics
University of Minnesota
4-101 Hanson Hall
1925 4th St S
Minneapolis, MN 55455
2024 Job Market Candidate:
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Thomas Hasenzagl
website
Thomas develops a quantitative model of entrepreneurial choice to analyze the aggregate and welfare impacts of mergers in the presence of scale efficiencies. The model incorporates (1) varying markups to reflect different levels of market power with firm size and (2) varying returns to scale to reflect lower selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) costs with firm growth. This framework generates a dynamic whereby mergers simultaneously increase market power and lower operational costs. Key model parameters are estimated using firm-level microdata from the US Census Bureau. The estimated model is then applied to assess the aggregate effects---especially on price levels and output---of different merger policies.