In April 2017 the UNC Economics Department hosted the second annual Triangle Microeconomics Conference. We welcomed scholars from the University of Illinois, Michigan, MIT, Ohio State, Northwestern, NYU, Penn, USC, and Yale for a day and a half of research presentations and discussion. Conference participants included the visiting speakers as well as faculty and graduate students from Triangle universities’ Economics departments and business schools, plus visitors from Clemson University, the University of Virginia, and Wake Forest University. The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC and Duke University’s Economics department provided generous financial support.
The conference’s unifying theme was the study of industrial organization (IO): firms’ strategies, consumers’ choices, and public policies that affect relationships among firms and consumers. Our invited speakers offered a range of theoretical and empirical perspectives on IO and applied microeconomics more broadly. While most of the conference presentations concerned the research-in-progress of leading scholars, a special aspect of the program was an extended discussion of two recent merger cases by two IO economists who were closely involved with the cases. The economists discussed their own expert testimony in each case and how modern research has shaped the cases’ outcomes. For more information about the conference and its participants please visit its website.
The conference’s lead organizers were UNC Economics professors Fei Li and Jonathan Williams. The conference was dedicated to the memory of UNC Professor Tiago Pires, who co-organized last year’s conference and passed away in April 2016.