Principal Investigator Glenn Ellison
Co-investigators Sara Ellison , Jerry Hausman , Paul Joskow , Nancy Rose , Richard Schmalensee
Applied microeconomics is comprised of several specialized areas of study:industrial organization and regulation; labor economics; public economics; political economy; health economics; economic history and financial economics.
Courses in industrial organization and regulation examine the strategic behavior of firms, the effect of government regulations, and more generally, the structure, behavior, and performance of product and service markets. MIT Economics offers undergraduate courses in industrial organization, regulatory economics, energy economics, health economics, and economics of telecommunications. Ph.D. students may take a two-semester sequence that investigates issues in industrial organization, antitrust, and regulation. An additional course on current topics is also frequently offered.
Many faculty members carry out research in industrial organization. Glenn Ellison has studied incentives and agency problems in the mutual fund industry and is now working on several internet-related topics. Sara Fisher Ellison is an expert on the pharmaceutical industry and is broadly interested in political pressures, bargaining power, and demand estimation. Jerry Hausman has examined the telecommunications market and written extensively on the economics of emerging industries such as the cellular telephone business. Panle Jia studies the entry decisions of firms using structural econometric models. Paul Joskow, whose empirical research spans a wide range of industries, has recently studied industry restructuring and competition in the electric power sector and environmental regulation. Nancy Rose studies the effects of deregulation on performance in the airline and trucking industries as well as the economics of deregulated electricity markets. Stephen Ryan is studying firm performance and market behavior with a particular emphasis on the application of new econometric and simulation methods. Richard Schmalensee has examined environmental economics and regulatory policy.