Gautam Gowrisankaran studies critical antitrust and competition issues with applications in areas such as healthcare, energy and high tech products.
Professor Gowrisankaran has particular expertise in analyzing highly regulated, rapidly technologically changing industries and markets where prices are negotiated. His research has been influential, using cutting-edge data to successfully devise cutting-edge methods that help answer complex, policy-relevant questions.
Professor Gowrisankaran specializes in how to better understand the behavior of firms in industries where prices are negotiated between buyers and sellers. His award-winning co-authored paper, Mergers When Price Are Negotiated: Evidence from the Hospital Industry, advances methods for estimating the price impact of mergers in such situations and then applies these methods. to assess the implications of mergers and policy interventions in hospitals. market. Professor Gowrisankaran’s work provides a tractable equilibrium framework that can be applied to other price negotiation settings, including many business-to-business (B2B) transactions.
Professor Gowrisankaran’s work is influential and successful in devising state-of-the-art methods that use cutting-edge data to help answer complex, policy-relevant questions.
Professor Gowrisankaran’s co-authored paper, ‘Nash-in-Nash’ Bargaining: A Microfoundation for Applied Work, lays the theoretical foundation for the Nash-in-Nash model. This model has become a workhorse for modeling corporate competition and actual negotiation protocols. world setting. This topic is becoming increasingly important in merger reviews as price negotiations take place in most areas involving B2B transactions and regulators are beginning to focus on the implications of a merger for all trading partners, not just consumers. .
By demonstrating that the market power of downstream firms can potentially counteract the market power of upstream firms, Professor Gourisankaran contributes to our understanding of vertical interactions and addresses a large antitrust policy gap. I am also working on a research paper addressing it. Due to his research contributions, Professor Gowrisankaran’s work has become widely used and cited both academically and in court.
Professor Gourisankaran’s research has also directly influenced policy decisions. For example, his study evaluating insurance design, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, has inspired models used by policy makers to predict the impact of policy reforms on health coverage. His award-winning paper, Soaking Up the Sun: Battery Investment, Renewable Energy, and Market Equilibrium, provides a framework for policy makers to assess the benefits and costs of energy storage policies.
Professor Gowrisankaran also provided comments on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and US Department of Justice (DOJ) draft vertical merger guidelines. He and co-authors discussed complex market interactions such as moral his hazards, information asymmetries, two-level competition, and price negotiations that can complicate merger analysis for “vertical” combinations. .
Professor Gowrisankaran is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). He serves on the US Congressional Budget Office’s Health Advisory Board. He has consulted both the FTC and the DOJ’s Antitrust Division on multiple mergers.
