Joel Waldfogel Faculty Profile

Joel Waldfogel
Joel S. Ehrenkranz Family Professor; Professor of Business and Public Policy
Chairperson, Business and Public Policy Department

PhD, Stanford University, 1990; BA, Brandeis University, 1984

Research Areas
Industrial organization; law and economics; public economics; economics of media industries

Recent Consulting
Federal Communications Commission Media Ownership Working Group, 2001-2003

Current Projects
Distributional effects in product markets; local media markets: race, localism, and political participation; intellectual property piracy; information intermediaries and competition in online markets.

Academic Positions Held
Wharton: 1997-present (Chairperson, Business and Public Policy Department, 2006-present; Associate Vice Dean, Doctoral Programs, 2000-2006; named Joel S. Ehrenkranz Family Professor, 2003). Previous appointment: Yale University

Other Positions
Economist, F.W. Dodge/DRI, 1985-87

Career and Recent Professional Awards; Teaching Awards
Alfred P. Sloan Dissertation Fellowship, Stanford University, 1989-90; John M. Olin Faculty Fellowship, Yale Law School, 1994

Professional Leadership 2003-2007
Member, Committee on Improving Research Information and Data on Firearms, National Research Council

Representative Publications
(with L. Chen)
“Does Information Undermine Brand? Information Intermediary Use and Preference for Branded Web Retailers.” Journal of Industrial Economics (forthcoming),

(with L. George)
"The New York Times and the Market for Local Newspapers." American Economic Review (2006).

(with R. Rob)
"Piracy on the High C's: Music Downloading, Sales Displacement, and Social Welfare." Journal of Law & Economics (forthcoming).

"Does Consumer Irrationality Trump Consumer Sovereignty?" The Review of Economics and Statistics (2005).

(with T. Sinai)
"Do Low-Income Housing Subsidies Increase Housing Consumption?" The Journal of Public Economics (2005).

(with F. Oberholzer-Gee)
"Strength in Numbers: Group Size and Political Mobilization" Journal of Law & Economics (2005).

"Preference Externalities: An Empirical Study of Whom Benefits Whom in Differentiated Product Markets." RAND Journal of Economics (2003).

(with L. George)
"Who Benefits Whom in Daily Newspaper Markets?" Journal of Political Economy (2003).