For their paper "Rising Markups and the Role of Consumer Preferences," Hendrik Döpper and Joel Stiebale (together with Alexander MacKay (Harvard) and Nathan H. Miller (Georgetown University)) were awarded the Robert F. Lanzillotti Prize. The authors show that companies in the consumer packaged goods industry in the U.S. significantly increased their market power between 2006 and 2019, increasing their price-cost margins by more than 30% on average. The main reasons for this increase are that consumers are less responsive to price changes over time, and falling production costs have therefore only been passed on to consumers to a small extent.
The Robert F. Lanzillotti Prize is for the best paper in antitrust economics accepted for presentation at the International Industrial Organization Conference is awarded annually.The IIOC is one of the most high-profile conferences of the year in the field of industrial organisation.