Ben Lockwood

Ben Lockwood is an assistant professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. His research specializes in public economics, with a focus on issues of optimal taxation and inequality. He has studied the use of taxes both for redistribution and as an instrument to change behavior. Recent work explores the use of taxes to discourage harmful or unhealthy behavior, to encourage talented workers to choose socially beneficial professions, and to encourage and support work while counteracting behavioral biases.

Professor Lockwood did his graduate work at Harvard University. His research has been published in leading journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Benjamin B. Lockwood, Charles Nathanson, E. Glen Weyl (Forthcoming), Taxation and the Allocation of Talent.

Benjamin B. Lockwood and Dmitry Taubinsky (Working), Regressive Sin Taxes.

Benjamin B. Lockwood (Working), Optimal Income Taxation with Present Bias.

Benjamin B. Lockwood and Matthew Weinzierl (2016), Positive and normative judgments implicit in U.S. tax policy, and the costs of unequal growth and recessions, Journal of Monetary Economics, 77, pp. 3047.

Benjamin B. Lockwood and Matthew Weinzierl (2015), De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in preferences and optimal redistribution, Journal of Public Economics, 124, pp. 7480.

Jonah Rockoff and Benjamin B. Lockwood (2010), Stuck in the Middle: Impacts of Grade Configuration in Public Schools, Journal of Public Economics, 94 (1112), pp. 10511061.

MGEC 611 Microeconomics for Managers

Past Courses

MGEC611 MICROECONOMICS FOR MANAG

This course establishes the microeconomic foundations for understanding business decisionmaking. The course will cover consumer theory and market demand under full information, market equiolibrium and government intervention, production theory and cost optimization, producing in perfectly competitive and monopoly markets, vertical relations, and game theory, including simultaneous, sequential, and infinitely repreated games. Finally, we will wrapup game theory with an application to auctionsn. Students are expected to have mastered these materials before enrolling in the second quarter course: Microechomics for Managers: Advanced Applications.

MGEC612 MICROECON FOR MGR ADV.

This course will cover the economic foundations of business strategy and decisionmaking in market environments with other strategic actors and less than full information, as well as advanced pricing strategies. Topics include oligopoly models of market competition, creation, and protection, sophisticated pricing strategies for consumers with different valuations or consumers who buy multiple units (e.g. price discrimination, bundling, twopart tariffs), strategies for managing risk and making decisions under uncertainty, asymmetric information and its consequences for markets, and finally moral hazard and principleagent theory with application to incentive contacts.

National Tax Association Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, 2016 Roger Martin Award for Excellence in Doctoral Research in Business Economics, 2015 Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard University Bok Center, 2015 Beinecke Scholarship for Graduate Study, 2007

Measuring the effectiveness of Philly’s sugary drink ‘sin tax’, National Public Radio: Philadelphia WHYY 03/06/2017 Do Sin Taxes Really Work?, Yahoo Finance 03/05/2017 Building a Better Earned Income Tax Credit, Knowledge@Wharton 01/19/2017 Here’s how much more soda will cost now that the tax is in effect, The Daily Pennsylvanian 01/10/2017 The case for a maximum wage, Vox 08/06/2014 Study: tax hikes could grow the economy, Vox 04/20/2014 Taxation and the distorted allocation of talent, Marginal Revolution 04/05/2014

Knowledge @ Wharton

Is a Universal Basic Income a Good Idea?, Knowledge @ Wharton 03/14/2017 Do ‘Sin Taxes’ Really Change Consumer Behavior?, Knowledge @ Wharton 02/10/2017 Building a Better Earned Income Tax Credit, Knowledge @ Wharton 01/19/2017